SpaceX rocket thought to have crashed into the moon in unintentional collision

A four-tonne piece of a discarded SpaceX rocket that has been floating in space since last year is believed to have unintentionally crashed into the moon at high speed, in a collision that poses no danger to Earth but was expected to blast out a new lunar crater. The object, the size of a building, is part of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that had launched a lunar lander from the US company Firefly Aerospace toward the moon in January 2025. The rocket body ⁠was due to hit the moon about 6.35am BST, crashing into its surface at 5,400mph (8,690 km/h). The impact was predicted to kick up a miles-long plume of lunar dust that, while illuminated by sunlight, would be difficult ⁠to spot with the naked eye from Earth. Professional and amateur astronomers using high-quality telescopes and cameras were not able to immediately confirm the impact on Wednesday, possibly due to the impact site being close to the visible edges of the moon. Related: ‘This feels fragile’: how a satellite-smashing chain reaction could spiral out of control Nasa has said the impact was expected to create a crater about 60ft (18 metres) wide and 12ft (four metres) deep and throw dust and rock outward as ejecta. The space agency said it would look for opportunities to image the site before and after the impact, with any data collected helping scientists “better understand artificial impacts and their exploration implications”. Nasa’s spokesperson Jimi Russell said on Tuesday: “The impact poses no danger to Earth and Nasa scientists are planning to collect lunar data from the event and refine techniques for tracking objects in space.” Such rocket parts, known as stages, ‌typically fall back into Earth’s atmosphere and burn up or plunge into the ocean after boosting the rocket’s payload to a precise spot in orbit. But ‌because the January 2025 lunar lander mission required more thrust than missions closer to Earth, the rocket’s second stage remained in space, floating aimlessly among thousands of other…