Washington, Aug. 6 (SANA) A spent upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket crashed into the Moon at high speed after spending about 18 months in space, astronomers said on Thursday, with a Chilean observatory detecting a cloud of debris generated by the impact.
According to Reuters, the roughly four-ton rocket stage struck the lunar surface at 0635 GMT on Wednesday at a speed of about 8,700 km (5,400 miles) per hour.
No spacecraft orbiting the Moon captured the moment of impact, but lunar orbiters are expected to image the crash site and the crater left behind in the coming days.
The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paranal Observatory in Chile detected spectral signatures from a cloud of material ejected by the collision, including sodium and lithium gases. The cloud remained visible for between five and 10 minutes.
Karl Schmidt, the astronomer leading the observations, said the sodium likely originated from lunar soil, while the lithium may have come from the rocket stage itself. He cautioned that the findings remain preliminary and require further analysis before firm conclusions can be drawn.
SpaceX said the impact was unintentional, explaining that solar activity and gravitational forces gradually altered the rocket stage’s orbit, ultimately sending it into a collision with the lunar surface near the Einstein crater on the Moon’s western limb.
The Falcon 9 upper stage was launched on Jan. 15, 2025, carrying Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander. After completing its mission, the stage remained in a long-duration Earth orbit before natural forces redirected it onto a trajectory that ended with the lunar impact.
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