Defunct SpaceX Falcon 9 stage expected to slam into the moon in 2026

A discarded SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage is on course to strike the moon near Einstein Crater at about 5,400 miles per hour, a collision scientists say should pose no danger to anyone on Earth but could throw up a crater and dust plume. The five-ton stage is expected to hit at about 2:34 a.m. ET on Aug. 5, 2026, or within a few minutes of 06:35 UTC. It would be only the second known case of a rocket unintentionally hitting the moon.

The booster had already done its primary work. In January 2025 it launched two commercial lunar landers before being abandoned in orbit, including Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, a NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services mission that lifted off on Jan. 15, 2025 and landed on March 2, 2025. The spent stage then drifted into a trajectory that put the moon in its path.

Scientists are watching because the impact could provide a rare natural experiment in lunar geology. A fast strike near Einstein Crater may help researchers gauge how much dust and debris a five-ton body can loft from the surface, and whether the plume can be measured cleanly from telescopes or spacecraft. The timing is narrowed to within a few minutes, which shows how precisely a dead booster can be followed and how little room remains once it is left to coast without propulsion.

The case also exposes a governance gap. SpaceX built and launched the hardware, but once a booster has finished delivering payloads and becomes derelict in cislunar space, no single body is clearly responsible for what happens next. That leaves tracking and disposal to a patchwork of mission planning, and it is one reason spent rockets and other space junk have become a sharper issue for governments and space agencies as private lunar traffic grows.