SpaceX Rocket Set to Strike Moon: Environmental Concerns Rise

Last updated: October 6, 2026

A spent SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stage launched in 2015 will strike the Moon on March 4, according to reporting by The Next Web. The 14-meter upper stage, weighing nearly four tonnes, has been drifting in an unstable orbit since it delivered NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory probe to a position 1.5 million kilometers from Earth facing the Sun. Unable to enter solar orbit and lacking fuel for atmospheric re-entry, the hardware will impact the lunar surface at approximately 2.6 kilometers per second.

Quick take

• The rocket launched in February 2015 carrying NASA's DSCOVR probe
• The upper stage weighs nearly four tonnes and measures 14 meters long
• Impact velocity will reach approximately 2.6 kilometers per second
• The resulting crater will measure roughly 19 meters in diameter
• The collision will take place on the hidden face of the Moon, beyond any Earth-based view

Why This Is Happening

Standard practice for spent rocket stages involves letting them re-enter Earth's atmosphere where they burn up, reducing dangerous debris in near-Earth space. This stage couldn't follow that path. Its trajectory after the 2015 launch left it in a wide orbit influenced by Earth, Moon, and Sun gravity. Precise predictions proved difficult until recently, when astronomers confirmed the March 4 impact trajectory.

The Moon lacks an atmosphere, meaning space debris accumulates naturally. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has documented a 19-meter crater from a half-tonne asteroid strike in March 2013 — that asteroid hit at roughly ten times the speed of the approaching Falcon 9 stage. Hundreds of smaller impacts occur annually.

Planetary Protection Concerns

The scientific community's concern isn't the crater itself — the Moon already hosts an estimated 500 million craters ten meters or larger. The worry is contamination. Most nations have signed the COSPAR planetary protection protocols, designed to minimize biological contamination between bodies.

Tardigrades were among the biological cargo aboard the Beresheet lander when it crashed in 2019. The Israeli spacecraft scattered these half-millimeter creatures — capable of surviving vacuum conditions — across the lunar surface. The crash site also received DNA samples. These organisms and their gut microbes remain there now.

The ethical argument holds that introducing Earth organisms to another body could harm any ecosystem that might exist there. The scientific argument is that contamination compromises studying natural conditions on other bodies. This particular stage had no biological cargo aboard, and its seven years drifting through space have almost certainly eliminated any viable contamination risk — though the more objects we send to the Moon, the harder enforcement becomes.

Who Should Care

• Space industry observers: The incident reveals weaknesses in how we dispose of deep-space hardware that cannot return to Earth for controlled burnup
• Planetary scientists: Orbiting spacecraft will image the new crater afterward, adding to the database of lunar impact events
• Policy analysts: Rising commercial lunar missions make COSPAR protocol enforcement increasingly difficult to maintain

What to Watch Next

The impact will occur on the far side, so direct observation is impossible. However, orbiting spacecraft should capture images of the resulting crater afterward. Scientists hope China's Chang'e 4 far side lander seismometer might register useful readings — the Apollo seismometers went offline decades ago.

Key takeaways

• The Falcon 9 impact exposes gaps in disposal procedures for deep-space rocket stages
• The physical crater poses no meaningful concern; biological contamination does
• Rising commercial lunar activity makes protocol compliance harder to enforce
• No biological payload aboard means contamination risk is minimal, but cumulative effects matter