A piece of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which has been floating in space since January 2025, is expected to crash into the moon at high speed early on Wednesday morning, August 5th, 2026.

The object, roughly the size of a school bus and weighing about four tonnes (4,000 kg), is the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that launched a lunar lander from Firefly Aerospace towards the moon.

The rocket stage is due to hit the lunar surface at approximately 2:35 a.m. ET (06:35 GMT), impacting at a speed of 8,690 km/h (5,400 mph). The collision is expected to occur in Einstein Crater on the moon’s western limb, a region often difficult to observe from Earth.

The impact will likely generate a plume of lunar dust illuminated by sunlight, though it will be challenging to see with the naked eye from Earth.

Typically, such rocket stages re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up or fall into the ocean after delivering their payloads to orbit, but this piece has remained in space until now.

Sources

South China Morning Post World, Reuters

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