Four-tonne rocket stage crashed into the far side of the Moon, trackers say
Astronomers who tracked a discarded rocket stage say the roughly four-tonne object slammed into the far side of the Moon on 4 March 2022.
In 30 seconds
- Astronomers say a roughly four-tonne rocket stage crashed into the far side of the Moon on 4 March 2022.
- Orbital analyst Bill Gray first identified it as a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage from NASA's 2015 DSCOVR launch, then reattributed it to a Chinese Long March 3C booster from 2014.
- China's foreign ministry said the booster it was linked to had burned up in Earth's atmosphere.
- NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter later imaged an unusual double crater at the predicted impact site.
The object is a spent rocket stage — the discarded engine-and-tank section left behind after a launch — that entered a chaotic orbit and eventually intersected the Moon. Key entities: Bill Gray (Project Pluto), whose software MPEC/find_orb predicted the impact; SpaceX, whose Falcon 9 launched NASA's DSCOVR satellite in 2015; the China National Space Administration, linked to the Chang'e 5-T1 lunar mission of 2014; and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which later photographed the impact crater.
Background
Deep-space rocket stages have drifted uncontrolled for decades, but almost all documented human-made objects to reach the Moon before were deliberate: crewed and robotic missions, or spent stages intentionally crashed to probe the surface, as during the Apollo programme and NASA's 2009 LCROSS experiment. This case stands out because the impact was accidental, the object's owner is disputed, and no one was watching the surface it hit.
What to do
For the public, the immediate impact is negligible, but the episode signals a policy gap: the hardware sent toward the Moon is not yet managed with the same discipline as satellites near Earth, and that gap will shape the safety of future lunar missions.
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This story was assembled from verified evidence, with its sources and reasoning recorded as it was written.