New crater likely to form after SpaceX rocket crashes into Moon

A SpaceX rocket piece floating in space since last year smashed into the moon at high speed early Wednesday morning, joining the ranks of meteoroids, wayward spacecraft ?and other pieces of space junk that have bombarded the lunar surface for ages, astronomers confirmed.

The school-bus-size object is the second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that ?had launched a lunar lander from Firefly Aerospace toward the moon in January 2025. Its predicted collision with the moon became a spectacle for astronomers and space enthusiasts eager to watch how it would unfold.

Weighing 4 metric tons (4,000 kg), the rocket body slammed into the moon around 2:35 a.m. ET (0635 GMT), travelling at 5,400 miles per hour (8,690 kph). None of the few spacecraft orbiting the moon were positioned to capture close-up images of the impact.

But at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, ?the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope detected glimmers of light associated with the impact.

“We can confirm that the telescope detected spectral lines of sodium and lithium gas in the impact ?plume lasting for 5-10 minutes after impact,” an ESO spokesperson told Reuters.

The impact occurred near the moon’s terminator line, or the boundary of its shadow between ?the sunlit side and its far side. Similar to past objects that have hit the moon, the rocket stage kicked up a plume of lunar dust that was briefly illuminated by sunlight, but difficult ?to spot with the naked eye from Earth.

Credit: Reuters

The post New crater likely to form after SpaceX rocket crashes into Moon appeared first on The Ghanaian Chronicle.

Read Full Story