ROCKET SHOCK

Musk’s Rocket Crashes Into the Moon at 5,400 MPH

Scientists determined that the SpaceX debris was on a collision course with the moon.

A part of one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets is believed to have smashed into the moon at 5,400 MPH. Researchers predicted that the section of rocket, the upper part of a Falcon 9 spacecraft, would make impact with the lunar surface at 2.35 am Eastern Time. The full spacecraft left Florida in January 2025, loaded with two lunar landers. The rocket section split off and began drifting in space, before being pulled towards the moon. It is the size of a five-story building, with a weight on Earth of at least 4,000kg, around the same weight as a heavy-duty pickup truck. The other bit is designed to return to Earth. NASA spokesperson Jimi Russel said there was “no danger to Earth,” but Matt Bothwell, astronomer at the University of Cambridge, said that while there was no immediate risk, the disused fragment is helping to crowd space with junk. “It could feasibly be within a few decades hard to get past Earth’s orbit because space is so crowded. It’s called space debris, and we should absolutely worry about it,” he told the BBC. Other scientists are plugging the collision as a chance to “collect lunar data.”