Astronomer Predicts SpaceX Falcon 9 Upper Stage to Crash into Moon
Astronomer Bill Gray predicts that the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will crash into the Moon on August 5 at 7:44 am UK time. The impact is expected to occur in the Einstein crater, located at the 10 o'clock position from Earth's perspective. Gray, creator of the Project Pluto software for tracking near-Earth objects, calculated the trajectory based on gravitational forces and solar radiation pressure. The debris, approximately the size of a five-storey building, has been orbiting Earth for about a year since its launch in 2025. Traveling at 8,700 km/h, the collision will not be visible to the naked eye and poses no danger to Earth or lunar operations. While the event itself is harmless, Gray highlights it as an example of the growing problem of space junk. He notes that while orbital mechanics are generally predictable, slight variations caused by sunlight make precise impact timing difficult to determine. This incident underscores the increasing accumulation of man-made debris in space, a concern for future orbital safety.
Editorial responsibility
- No named human review is recorded for this page.
- Reports are grouped by semantic similarity and deterministic rules. Language models may assist titles, summaries, translation and cross-source analysis; the page itself is projected from evidence records.
- Current automated evidence projection