[AP]
[AP]

A Chilean telescope has captured evidence of a SpaceX rocket fragment striking the moon at 8,690 kilometers per hour (5,400 mph).

The upper stage of a SpaceX rocket hit the near side of the moon at 3:35 p.m. Wednesday Korean Standard Time, according to CBS News, The Guardian and other media. The debris weighed about 4 metric tons, measured roughly 14 meters long and 3.7 meters wide, and gouged a crater approximately 30 meters across and 5 meters deep.

The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile detected the impact's aftermath, picking up spectral lines of sodium and lithium gas in a dust cloud that lingered for five to 10 minutes after the collision. ESO public outreach scientist Barbara Ferreira said spectral lines act as chemical fingerprints that identify which elements are present.

Karl Schmidt, a research professor at Boston University's Center for Space Physics who led the observation, told CBS News the dust cloud stretched tens of kilometers across.

"Opportunities for this to happen are not common, and it gives us a chance to understand how the lunar atmosphere works," Schmidt said. "This is the second time in my lifetime." Observations were also made successfully from Massachusetts and Arizona.

[AP]
[AP]

The rocket that struck the moon was a Falcon 9 launched Jan. 15, 2025, carrying two lunar landers. Its first-stage booster returned to Earth, but the upper stage drifted in space before eventually colliding with the moon.

The first known artificial object to hit the moon was a Soviet probe deliberately crashed into it in 1959. Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972 also left spacecraft components on the lunar surface, and a Japanese probe in 1993 and a European Space Agency satellite in 2006 both struck the moon.

In 2009, NASA intentionally slammed a rocket upper stage into a permanently shadowed crater near the lunar south pole, confirming the presence of water ice.

NASA said it plans to collect lunar observation data from the latest impact and refine techniques for tracking objects in space.


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