A SpaceX Rocket Is About to Crash Into the Moon at 5,400 MPH. Then What Happens?

Since January 2025, a big chunk of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has been orbiting high above Earth. On August 5, 2026, researchers will finally get the chance to see what happens when a 45-foot piece of rocket ship slams into the Moon.

As detailed by Space, a new preprint study says the impact could become an accidental science experiment that gives astronomers a front-row seat to an event that could be fascinating, could be calamitous, but is for sure worthy of watching with a big bucket of popcorn. For them, at least, since they’re the ones with the high-powered telescopes. It will be a bit harder for you to see it.

The entire Falcon 9 isn’t going to slam into the moon, just its upper stage, the part that helped launch Firefly’s Blue Ghost-1 and ispace’s Hakuto-R Resilience lunar missions before running out of fuel. Falcon nine upper stages usually burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere, but this one wandered into an unstable orbit until gravity decided to slingshot it toward the moon.

The Rocket’s Impact With the Moon Will Be Visible From Earth. Sort of.

Now, the rocket is expected to smash into the moon’s near side (the side facing us every night) near Einstein crater at around two kilometers a second, releasing energy equivalent to about 2.8 tons of TNT. That should carve out a sizable crater between 20 and 30 meters wide while blasting lunar dust and debris across the surface.

One look at the moon will let you know that it can and has absorbed such impacts plenty of times before, so it should be fine. The rocket, meanwhile…well, from everyone here on Earth, I give the rocket a preemptive RIP.

Scientists view the whole thing as a chance to observe how actual lunar debris slamming into the moon would behave compared to a computer simulation. If telescopes catch the impact flash, and that’s a mighty big if, the data could improve future monitoring of natural and man-made lunar impacts.