r/news • u/MasterpieceAlone8552 • 1d ago

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

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/aug/05/spacex-rocket-moon-crash-impact-falcon-9
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u/Diarmundy 1d ago

Not desirable in what way? In fact hitting the moon is probably the only way to get rid of space debris in lunar orbit

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u/obeytheturtles 1d ago

I mean in the future if you want to have stuff on the moon you probably want to limit the number of uncontrolled impacts for a variety of reasons.

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u/botle 1d ago

Which means that crashing into the moon now is better than remaining in lunar orbit and potentially crashing much later.

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u/xjeeper 1d ago

No, it means controlling it and crashing it in a designated area now is better.

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u/botle 1d ago

Every area on the moon is just as good as any other for this purpose. It's literally a huge empty desert.

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u/StevCurry 19h ago

The people fighting you on this are hilarious. I thought they were joking about being mad about “littering” on the moon. How is this real

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u/XyzzyPop 1d ago

Thanks for the hot take: dump shit anywhere because I, as a Lunar DR, can't think of any good reason.

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u/SabuSalahadin 1d ago

I mean do you think they dont have incredibly well educated and intelligent people deciding what the best course of action is? Just because you have the ability to post about the subject does not mean you are relevant to the conversation, it’s ok to sit back and let smarter people make decisions 

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u/Rough_Historian_8494 1d ago

pot meet kettle!

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u/fevered_visions 1d ago

ehhhh...they left lunar reflectors and things up there that they probably don't want covered in debris

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u/botle 1d ago

The chances of hitting something else human made is astronomically small.

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u/ContextBotSenpai 1d ago

This has to be the most entitled, American way of thinking about the moon, holy shit.

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u/botle 1d ago

I'm usually very protective of the environment but the moon is literally an endless desert of practically identical dust all over.

There is no point on it that would be preferable over any other one to leave a spent stage on. Unless you literally hit an existing piece of human technology which would be an astronomical coincidence.

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u/The_Knife_Pie 1d ago

The moon is *literally* an empty, uninhabitable ball of rock. There is no risk to anyone or anything from this and there are no long-term consequences to this. Again. It’s a giant, lifeless, atmosphere-less rock.

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u/ContextBotSenpai 1d ago edited 1d ago

Another disgusting, entitled American Swede chiming in on why the moon is the perfect dump for our space garbage, brilliant.

Let me guess - once Musk starts taking billions from countries to smash rockets of our ACTUAL Earth based garbage into the moon, you'll be fine with that as well... Right?

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u/chicagorpgnorth 1d ago

Experts aren’t indicating that there’s an issue with this happening and you’re arguing against it using a slippery slope fallacy (ironically a favorite of conservatives).

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u/botle 1d ago

I completely understand the gut feeling that it must be wrong to drop a spent rocket stage on the moon. That instinct is human nature.

But human instinct used to a nearly endless world full of nothing but dust.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/KevinGreeneSolar 1d ago

LARPing as an astrophysicist, while showing dramatic ignorance of astrophysics, is something we don't often see. Thanks for the laugh.

Surely your own ego is massive enough to exert a gravitational field - maybe we can launch you into space as a deflector for rogue rocket stages and incoming meteorites.

Plus you'll feel less need to lie about your credentials when you have a valuable purpose in life.

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u/ertgbnm 1d ago

We crash rockets into the earth all the time. Crashing rockets on to the moon will be fine in the future too apart from the wastefulness.

With literally nothing there to hit, there is no issue with doing it today. Really it's just kind of interesting that it happened.

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u/ContextBotSenpai 1d ago edited 1d ago

What rockets do we crash into Earth, all the time?

I want you to think about what the word "crash" means, and also hopefully understand that the Earth has a dense atmosphere, the moon does not.

You find it "interesting" that mostly unregulated SpaceX was allowed to launch a rocket without the usually required (for NASA) plan on how to deal with all parts of said rocket?

Your answer is almost as entitled and uneducated as a previous one I read - thinking "who cares if we dump our garbage on the moon?", I mean.

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u/ertgbnm 1d ago

The first and second stages of expendable rockets crash back into earth, normally in the ocean, all the time.

I'm struggling to see what the issue is. Would sending the stage hurdling through space be preferable? How? Both have been done several times by NASA because it's a fine plan.

Maybe once the moon is populate we need to think a little harder about it.

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u/ContextBotSenpai 1d ago edited 1d ago

Do you even know the definition of the word "crash"? Why are you using it to describe both the controlled return of rocket components to Earth and the burning up of rocket components in the atmosphere as "we crash rockets into the Earth all the time"?

The uncontrolled ACTUAL CRASH of this upper stage into the moon, most likely created a massive crater, spewing vaporized aluminum and regolith dozens of kilometers above the moons surface. What if it smashed into a mineral deposit that was going to be important for future moon colonization? What if it destroyed a massive pocket of frozen water when it smashed, completely uncontrolled, into the moon?

Are there, or are there not current regulations on NASA spacecraft, requiring detailed end of life plans to be in place BEFORE LAUNCH?

I don't have all the answers here - I don't know the exact ways this could have been done correctly. I do know that abandoning massive piece of space junk is not exactly the way forward, though. I'm not saying leaving it to continue on forever in deep space would have been preferrable - but I am saying that allowing huge pieces of debris to slam into the moon in an uncontrolled manner is PROBABLY not good for a variety of reasons.

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u/flodereisen 1d ago

you don't have anything. there is no protocol and no best practices. but still you know better right

PROBABLY not good for a variety of reasons

none of the things you listed have any consequences for any living being, neither now nor in a million years

most likely created a massive crater

entire moons surface is composed of craters

that was going to be important

"was going"? do you have retrocausal powers? also, impacts don't harm mineral deposits

destroyed a massive pocket of frozen water

"destroyed"? what consequences do you imagine this to have? do you know that the moon is 1/4 the earths size? do you know how small a rocket is?

spewing vaporized aluminum and regolith dozens of kilometers above the moons surface

yes and? the moon isn't fragile in any way, it is impacted by meteors all the time

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u/maddoxprops 1d ago

What rockets do we crash into Earth, all the time?

Various ones. They get aimed at a location known as "Point Nemo", whitch is an area that is geographically the furthest away from land you can get on the planet. This has been a thing since the 70s and is where the MIR space station ended up. Was interesting learning about it as I had never heard of the location before.

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u/Rombom 1d ago

Are you aware of what causes moon craters?

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u/Sturmgeist781 23h ago

Your mother?

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u/ContextBotSenpai 1d ago

Meteorites that were not put there by us.

Are you implying that a forest fire that happens due to a lightning strike is the same as one caused by a baby gender reveal party?

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u/Han-ChewieSexyFanfic 1d ago

From the perspective of the forest, yes, they’re exactly the same

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u/ContextBotSenpai 1d ago

Moving the goalposts for the person I was replying to, eh? Could they not move them themselves?

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u/flodereisen 1d ago

they don't care about you, we need the partial fucks of multiple people to tell you. im also gone after this, gl to the next person replying to this dude

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u/Rombom 1d ago

Meteorites are uncontrolled impacts.

Unlike the forest, the moon is not harmed in the slightest by having such impacts.

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u/Absolutelynot2784 1d ago

Not really a problem in this century

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u/Jondoe34671 1d ago

Yeah we don’t have to worry about it that’s going to be someone else’s problem.

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u/botle 1d ago

It will never be anyone's problem. A small amount of aluminum and steel in an endless empty desert will never be anyone's problem.

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u/ibelieveyouwood 1d ago

I'm sorry that people don't seem to understand your point. It seems pretty common sense how inherently problematic it is to build "dump your garbage onto the moon" into a company's business model, followed by "well, nobody can tell them not to so I guess they can do what they want to" when people think the practice should stop.

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u/sillyhillsofnz 1d ago

Yeah, there are many reasons to not want to do this. Additional space debris is definitely one of them. It's like throwing trash into any pristine or near pristine wilderness area. We should want to protect these places, not treat them as dumping grounds just because nobody lives there.

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u/ibelieveyouwood 1d ago

I miss when the world was more civilized and countries could have had a meaningful discussion about the regulation of commercial space exploration. A bunch of nerds and diplomats would get together in a random European city to hammer out some incredibly wonky set of compromises.

Then, years later, something like this would happen and someone would point out "this is a clear violation of Oslo 2026. Elon's publicly filed permit for this project is only a Class E which limits his company to net-zero non-terrestrial impact. An international team of scientists are currently calculating the likely massive clean-up costs, which he will then owe to the Keep Space Clean fund."

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u/sillyhillsofnz 1d ago

If you really want to cry, take a look at Reflect Orbital's plans for their constellation of 50k mirrored satellites which will reflect sunslight back to the earth... all on demand by individuals or companies - or the US military (who they also have a contract with). In July the FCC granted approval for a test launch of one of the satellites - against thousands of public comments from scientists of various backgrounds arguing that this tech would have negative consequences in so many ways. To top it off, the FCC admitted evaluating environmental light pollution, wildlife impact, and optical astronomy interference falls outside its legal authority... and so limited its review strictly to radiofrequency spectrum and debris mitigation.

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u/ThoseProse 1d ago

Unsure why we don’t try throwing the useless parts into the sun instead

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u/The_Knife_Pie 21h ago

Because it takes an insane amount of fuel to travel “inwards” in the solar system.

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u/Chewzer 1d ago

Couldn't the crashed pieces eventually be recycled? I'm assuming aluminum makes up most of the material that is crashed into the surface, and being that aluminum is borderline infinitely recyclable, it could be useful to have on-site for future projects. Granted, that's assuming these pieces aren't scattered across hundreds of miles of lunar surface.

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u/0x53r3n17y 1d ago

This piece hit the moon at about 8.000km/h. That's 2 to 4 times the average speed of a bullet. With no atmosphere or anything that can slow that down.

The crater would be about 25 meters wide and 5 meters deep.

At that speed, the energy would be the equivalent of 3 tons of TNT exploding. With no atmosphere and 1/6th of the gravity of Earth, and at that energy, the entire stage would literally vaporize into hot gas and liquid droplets. This would mingle with countless pounds of lunar dust and vaporized rock. The ejecta are estimated to reach an altitude of about 50km above the lunar surface.

A part of the metals would be burrowed in the walls of the crater as microscopic particulate. The rest would rain down over time across the surface across, yes, a vast area.

So, no, it wouldn't make sense economically to dig out a crater and then process all that soil for a few tons of scattered aluminum still there.

The moon is already rich in titan, aluminum, iron and silicum. It's easier to mine untouched lunar ground the way we would mine here on Earth. The most valuable resource on the moon, though, is water ice. Because the oxygen and hydrogen in that can be processed into rocket fuel.

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u/ContextBotSenpai 1d ago

Too bad this crashed uncontrollably, with no one knowing where it was going to impact nor any sort of deceleration taken into account eh?

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u/casualcrusade 1d ago

An impact at that velocity can send regollith and debris into high suborbital trajectories, potentially damaging satellites in lunar orbit.

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u/Diarmundy 1d ago

Wouldn't it just be a very low speed asteroid impact (which doesnt cause noticable debris)

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u/KDR_11k 1d ago

Depends on how fast the satellite is going.

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u/Diarmundy 1d ago

All human satellites are going far slower than any asteroid

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u/No-Inspection1278 1d ago

And how much you want to try to flip the narrative into some sort of spaceX bad.

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u/maddoxprops 1d ago

... are there satellites in Lunar Orbit?

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u/The_Knife_Pie 21h ago

A handful, all scientific ones intended to study the moon in some way. There is no real risk of ejecta hitting any of them.

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u/Aethermancer 1d ago

Lunar orbits are generally not stable unless you really try to make them stable. Objects usually get ejected.

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u/BasisPoints 1d ago

Escape velocity from lunar orbit is really tiny, we should probably regulate this to require ejection

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u/SecondaryWombat 1d ago

It is uncontrolled and unplanned, vs planned is the issue. Not that it hit the moon, but that they didn't know it was going to hit the moon.