On August 5th 2026, a leftover part of a Space X rocket has crashed onto the side of the moon! How did it crash into the moon?! Scientists are now studying why it crashed into the moon. They have to know what will happen if something hits the lunar surface. Falcon 9 rocket has an empty part that hit on the side of the moon that faces earth directly. It is very dangerous for Earth. It happened on Wednesday before 8 am (UK time). The speed when it crashed into the lunar surface was 5,400 miles/hour. That’s very fast.

The American space agency, NASA, said that there is no risk of harm for us on Earth and they will “observe the impact site for scientific purposes.” None of the spacecrafts were positioned to crash into something. The job for scientists now is to compare before and after images of the surface in order to find a new impact crater. Space X Falcon 9 is not a unreusable rocket. It’s a two-stage rocket. The company called it a reliable and safe tranport rocket.

Rockets often have many stages that is just defined as sections of a spacecraft. The first stage’s job is to give the first big push away from earth for the rocket. Then, the upper stage’s job is to send the spacecraft further into space. The upper stage finally launched on January 2025. The fairing’s (the tip of a rocket). It’s job is to protect the spacecraft when launching, but it will break shortly after. The second section is the part of the rocket that hit the moon. The size of it is about a five story building and it weighs at least 4,000 kg on Earth which is about 8,800 lbs. The whole rocket is 70 m tall and about 230 ft.

Part of Falcon 9 returned back to Earth but some parts still stayed in space and couldn’t be returned back to Earth. It was left in the space that’s clearly around Earth.