The moon [123RF]
The moon [123RF]

A piece of SpaceX rocket debris is set to crash into the western surface of the moon Wednesday.

The upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket — designated 2025-010D — is expected to strike near the moon's western edge at 3:34 p.m. Wednesday (Korea Standard Time), after drifting through space for roughly 18 months.

The upper stage is part of a Falcon 9 launched Jan. 15 last year from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The rocket carried two lunar landers: Blue Ghost, built by US-based Firefly Aerospace, and Resilience, built by Japan's ispace.

The first stage was recovered after splashing down off the Atlantic coast about eight minutes after liftoff. The upper stage, which had delivered the payloads into lunar orbit, was left in space after running out of fuel. It spent roughly 18 months tracing an elliptical orbit between Earth and the moon before the moon's gravity gradually drew it closer.

The object is expected to strike near the Einstein crater at around 8,700 kph — about seven times the speed of sound. The rocket stage weighs approximately 4.5 metric tons and measures 12 meters in length. The combination of mass and velocity is expected to carve a large artificial crater into the lunar surface.

The collision is also expected to eject regolith — the layer of fine dust and small rock fragments covering the moon's surface, formed by meteorite impacts — several kilometers above the surface.

Whether South Korea's lunar orbiter Danuri (KPLO) will be able to capture the moment of impact remains a key question. Danuri was developed by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute and launched in 2022 as South Korea's first lunar probe. It entered a frozen orbit around the moon in September last year and is conducting observation missions through 2027. A frozen orbit naturally maintains its trajectory without fuel or manual adjustment.


husn7@heraldcorp.com