In other (bad) news for SpaceX, a four-tonne piece of a discarded SpaceX rocket that has been floating in space since last year is believed to have unintentionally crashed into the moon at high speed, in a collision that poses no danger to Earth but was expected to blast out a new lunar crater.<\/p>\n
The object, the size of a building, is part of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that had launched a lunar lander from the US company Firefly Aerospace toward the moon in January 2025.<\/p>\n
The rocket body \u2060was due to hit the moon about 6.35am BST, crashing into its surface at 5,400mph (8,690 km\/h). The impact was predicted to kick up a miles-long plume of lunar dust that, while illuminated by sunlight, would be difficult \u2060to spot with the naked eye from Earth.<\/p>\n
Professional and amateur astronomers using high-quality telescopes and cameras were not able to immediately confirm the impact on Wednesday, possibly due to the impact site being close to the visible edges of the moon.<\/p>\n
Nasa has said the impact was expected to create a crater about 60ft (18 metres) wide and 12ft (four metres) deep and throw dust and rock outward as ejecta.<\/p>\n