Piece of SpaceX Rocket Crashes Into Moon

On August 5th, a part of SpaceX’s abandoned Falcon 9 rocket crashed into the moon, giving astronomers a rare chance to observe what happens when a high-speed, man made object slams into the moon.

This spaceship was launched in 2025 and abandoned. It entered an unstable gravitational pull between Earth, the Moon, and the Sun. It drifted in this phase for eighteen months and then sped in to the moon at 5,400 miles per hour. The ship vaporized on contact with the moon and left a cloud of chemicals like sodium and lithium. It also left a gaping crater 60 to 80 feet across and a little less than ten feet deep. The part of the rocket that crashed was the upper stage. It weighed about 4 metric tons and was roughly 40 feet long. The rocket lacked explosives and crew. No explosive substances were in the rocket and it didn’t hold people. Because the hollow rocket lacked explosives or remaining fuel, there was no massive fiery explosion.

This crash was on the Earth-facing side of the moon, so scientists could analyze the crash from Earth.