On August 5 at 2:35 PM Beijing time, a spent second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket — adrift in space for nearly 19 months — finally met its end, slamming into the Moon’s western edge near the Einstein crater at a blistering speed of about 2.4 kilometers per second.
With no atmosphere to slow it down, the debris hit the lunar surface directly. Researchers estimate the wreckage was about five stories tall and weighed roughly 4 tons. The impact released energy equivalent to several tons of TNT, carving out a brand-new crater anywhere from 17 to 40 meters in diameter — the exact size is still to be confirmed. This marks the largest human-made crater ever created on the Moon.
The impact zone sits near the Einstein crater on the Moon’s far western limb, a spot that’s pretty remote when viewed from Earth. The general public won’t be able to spot the impact flash with the naked eye, but professional observatories worldwide tracked the collision using radio telescopes and optical gear. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter will snap high-res images of the impact site later to pin down the exact spot and crater shape.
This Falcon 9 upper stage, catalogued as “2025-010D,” came from a major launch on January 15, 2025. During that mission, the Falcon 9 sent Firefly Aerospace’s “Blue Ghost” lunar lander and Japan’s ispace lunar lander into space. After deploying its payloads, the upper stage was left in a high Earth orbit that intersected the Moon’s path — and from then on, it just drifted out of control until gravity dragged it down to the lunar surface.
The Falcon 9 is a two-stage rocket. The first stage can return to Earth and be reused; the second stage ignites in the upper atmosphere to push satellites or probes into their target orbits. On low-Earth-orbit missions, the second stage sometimes has leftover fuel to lower its orbit and burn up on re-entry, or it can be parked in a safer disposal orbit. But lunar missions require sending payloads much farther out, which burns way more fuel. After finishing its job, this particular second stage didn’t have enough juice left to head back to Earth or escape into a safer heliocentric orbit. Instead, it kept shifting its trajectory under the gravitational pulls of Earth, the Moon, and the Sun — becoming just another piece of space junk.
The debris was first spotted by Bill Gray, an independent astrodynamics expert whose “Project Pluto” orbit-tracking software is widely used by astronomers around the globe. As early as September 2025, Gray noticed this oddly behaving piece of space junk. After months of crunching numbers and tweaking orbital models, he confirmed this past March that it would ultimately smash into the Moon.
According to data from the European Space Agency and other international bodies, there are roughly 140 million pieces of space debris larger than 1 millimeter orbiting Earth right now. International treaties do require nations to avoid harmful pollution of outer space and to minimize risks from space activities, but enforcement remains pretty lax. There’s still no clear, mature framework for who should clean up dead satellites and discarded rocket stages — and no global system exists yet to remove the debris already up there. Gray stressed: “This isn’t going to pose a danger to anyone. But it does highlight a certain casualness in how we deal with discarded space hardware.”
Interestingly enough, on the very same day the rocket debris hit the Moon, SpaceX took a hit in the stock market too. As of this writing, SpaceX shares were down more than 10% in pre-market trading. Just last night, the stock had surged 9.43%.
On August 4, after the US market closed, SpaceX — which had gone public less than two months earlier — released its first quarterly earnings report as a listed company. The numbers showed total revenue of $7.814 billion for Q2 2026, up 92% year-over-year from $4.071 billion and well above Wall Street’s expectations of around $6.9 billion. Net loss came in at $541 million, narrowing 46% from $1.008 billion a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA hit $3.538 billion, a staggering 191% jump year-over-year.
But what got investors’ attention was SpaceX’s ballooning capital expenditure. The company spent $18.369 billion on capex in Q2 — about 6.5 times the $2.825 billion from the same period last year and a big jump from Q1’s $10.107 billion. Of that, $15.828 billion went into AI computing infrastructure, accounting for over 80% of total capex. CFO Bret Johnsen said the company expects to keep capital spending at similar levels for the coming quarters. Meanwhile, SpaceX didn’t offer any forward-looking financial guidance, which left the market feeling uneasy.
Market analysts point out that while SpaceX beat expectations and CFO Bret Johnsen projects annual revenue will hit $100 billion, there’s a looming overhang: a massive lock-up expiry is set for Thursday US Eastern time, when a huge chunk of SpaceX shares becomes eligible for sale. The number of shares unlocking is a whopping 912 million. Based on Wednesday’s closing price of $125.33, that translates to a market value of $114 billion — roughly 1.4 times the company’s current float. That’s going to test investors’ resolve to hold.
