A Stray SpaceX Rocket Will Smash Into the Moon at Mach 7 in August, Analyst Says
A Falcon 9 upper stage has been stuck in a highly elliptical Earth orbit for over a year—and now it's on a collision course with the Moon.
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When SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launched a pair of commercial lunar landers in January 2025, the rocket’s upper stage was supposed to return to Earth. Instead, it got stuck in a highly elliptical orbit, and an astronomer now says it’s going to hit the Moon.cnx.cmd.push(function(){cnx({"playerId":"92b7b46b-43ed-4e0e-b21b-2c999302d9d7","settings":{"advertising":{"macros":{"AD_UNIT":"/23178111854/od.gizmodo.com/article","CHILD_UNIT":"article","POST_ID":"2000752619","POST_TYPE":"post","CHANNEL":"science","SECTION":"space","SUBSECTION":"","CATEGORIES":"space","TAGS":"falcon-9,rocket-launch-failures,spacex,the-moon","NOP":"0"},"timeBeforeFirstAd":0}}}).render("cnx-player-main")}); Bill Gray, an independent orbital analyst and creator of the Project Pluto object-tracking software, used this program to…
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