A drifting SpaceX rocket is on a collision course with the moon after launching a pair of lunar landers more than a year ago.
The rocket’s upper stage will unintentionally slam into the moon on Wednesday, carving out a crater and sending up a plume of dust and rubble that scientists – and sky gazers – are eager to observe.
Space tracking expert Bill Gray predicts an impact of 5,400mph (8,700km/h) – seven times the speed of sound – near Einstein Crater on the moon’s sunlit western limb. With the action unfolding in the wee hours of the morning for the US, the eastern portions of the US and Canada, and much of South America, should have the best views.
While scientists are not too concerned about this particular piece of space junk, it highlights the growing threat as more and more items cram into orbit.
“Things are getting crowded up there,” said Gray, who plans to view the aftermath from New Brunswick, Canada.
It was never SpaceX’s intent to hit the moon. But space experts said the crash could have been avoided if the upper stage had been nudged into orbit around the sun.
It will be the second dead rocket known to crash into the moon accidentally. A Chinese rocket segment dug out a pair of craters on the lunar far side in 2022.
The new smashup will occur on the moon’s near side, packing the equivalent energy of three tons of TNT explosives.
The impact flash, lasting less than a second, will probably be too dim to see from Earth, according to experts. But the stream of ejected material could stretch for several miles into space and remain visible to telescopes for tens of minutes.
“Gravity on the moon is low and there is no wind to blow the dust away,” said Los Alamos national laboratory’s Benjamin Fernando, who is encouraging observations by professionals and amateurs alike.
“Part of the reason for our interest in this event is to figure out how much of a hazard debris impacts pose to future astronauts,” he added in an email.
Fernando anticipates an impact crater nearly 90ft across and 16ft deep (27 meters across and 5 meters deep), too small to see from Earth but visible to spacecraft.
Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter will gather before-and-after shots of the crash scene.
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