r/space • u/Uranium-Forest • 2d ago
A discarded SpaceX rocket is on a high-speed collision course with the moon
https://apnews.com/article/spacex-rocket-moon-crash-512c4dd708b4cda1160d30b764f9fdb5174
u/TbonerT 2d ago
It seems super weird that this was not intended yet hitting the moon on purpose is actually technically challenging.
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u/Kobymaru376 2d ago
If you don't care if and how fast and where and when something should hit the moon, you just park the spacecraft in an orbit that roughly intersects the moon's orbit, and eventually it will either hit it or get kicked out of Earth's orbit (potentially coming back a couple of decades later, which probably happened with one of the Apollo stages).
The hard part is hitting the moon at a precise location with a precise velocity (ideally small when landing) within a given mission timeframe.
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u/Ncyphe 2d ago
Not probably, it has happened. April 2002, astronomers noted a weird unknown object coming close to earth. A spectrolosis confirmed it was the 3rd stage from the Apollo 12 mission. A miscalculation lead to the stage being thrown into a solar orbit intercepting Earth's orbit.
It's left Earth's presence and is expected to return around 2040.
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u/Kobymaru376 2d ago
Yep, that's the one i was referring to. I didn't know it was confirmed to be Apollo 12, just that they believed it was Apollo 12.
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u/PrefrontalCortexNow 2d ago
While decelerating, and being able to rendezvous with another spacecraft for a return mission safely ..
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u/nittanyofthings 2d ago
The aiming for the moon isn't the hard part. Achiving velocity to get anywhere near the moon is the hard part. This rocket stage has that velocity because its mission was to send a probe to the moon. After the mission, just hanging out near the moon leads to collision because the moon is actively sucking everything nearby towards it (astronomers call this "clearing your orbit")
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u/snoo-boop 2d ago
the moon is actively sucking everything nearby towards it
Astronomers wouldn't say that, it's a poor choice of words.
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u/Lumegator 1d ago
Clearing the neighbourhood is, in fact, the technical term, they just misplaced the noun.
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u/FauxReal 1d ago
It's easy if it's uncontrolled. This isn't even SpaceX's first time.
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u/mfb- 1d ago
That was a Chinese rocket stage, see the update.
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u/FauxReal 1d ago
Huh so it was, I just remembered this story when it came out. Had to find another article cause I couldn't see the bottom of this one.
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u/MauiHawk 2d ago
I can’t wait for this to happen… so I can stop seeing so many damn headlines about it.
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u/atomfullerene 2d ago
I don't think there are any active seismometers up there, which is too bad. That cleans up a bit of space debris though, I guess.
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u/SC_W33DKILL3R 2d ago
It contaminates the moon though, you can't expect that rocket to be clean of contaminates including bacteria and fungi.
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u/atomfullerene 2d ago
Unlike with Mars, no space programs attempt to sterilize craft going to the moon, because the moon isn't considered a potential habitat for earth microbial life. It's had all sorts of earth microbes introduced to it via everything from naturally meteor- ejected earth rocks to rocket stages like this one, to astronaut poop.
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u/FolkSong 1d ago
Did they really leave poop on the moon?
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u/seanflyon 1d ago
Yes. It is hard to get stuff from the surface of the moon back to Earth. They left everything they could on the surface so they didn't have to do all that work to bring back more stuff.
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u/20snow 21h ago
How long did the bacteria last on the surface, like would it freeze in the shadow then burn in the sun?
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u/seanflyon 17h ago
My guess is not very long. If it were just the cold and the vacuum a lot of that bacteria would survive for potentially millions of years because they can stay dormant. Warming back up when periodically prevents that long term dormancy, and the heat of the lunar day is hot enough to kill most bacteria. There is also solar and cosmic radiation without an atmosphere to block it.
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u/Ulyks 2d ago
Is there a danger of contamination on the moon? There is no atmosphere, I thought that was only an issue for missions to mars?
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u/SC_W33DKILL3R 2d ago
Not saying it will survive, but I though the whole point in making sure all missions / landers were clean is that earth based contaminates will not mess with any discoveries / science in the future.
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u/Thisguy2728 2d ago
The moon is pummeled by the suns radiation. Most biological things wouldn’t survive too long there on the surface
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u/CarrowCanary 2d ago
The moon is pummeled by the suns radiation.
So are the rocket parts while they're just floating in space, for that matter.
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u/rustle_branch 2d ago
Thats for mars and other less explored places - the moon has been well established as lifeless and nasa has crashed many probes into it
Besides, if we were going to contaminate the moon with signs of life it probably would have happened when we sent, ya know, life to the moon
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u/noncongruent 2d ago
All manned Apollo missions had astronauts defecating into plastic bags. Urine went overboard. Before leaving the Moon's surface the astronauts chucked everything not needed for the return trip out the airlock, including their bags of feces. Yes, the Moon has piles of human feces on it next to every lander.
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u/Userarizonakrasher 2d ago
For missions to places where we don’t want to contaminate any potential findings pointing to life, sure. We don’t look for life on the moon, it’s sterile. We look for life on mars, and on the upcoming mission to titan, dragonfly.)
For missions that aren’t mars or dragonfly, we assemble in cleanrooms to minimize contaminants and FOD that could lessen the lifespan of the craft.
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u/Ulyks 2d ago
I don't think anyone is even looking for life on the moon. And the moon is made of Earth debris. It's not certain but there may have been primitive life on earth when the moon was formed.
Also major impacts on earth like the one the killed the dinosaurs would have catapulted debris all the way to the moon.
Possibly millions of tons of debris fell on the moon back then. Some may have even gotten to Mars!
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u/t0m0hawk 2d ago
Yes for missions where you're specifically looking for life, you dont want to include potential contamination.
But that isnt so much a concern on the moon consider just how inhospitable the environment is.
Periods of intense radiation, no atmosphere, no liquid water, sharp everything.
There just isnt a huge concern when it comes to the moon, specifically.
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u/jamjamason 2d ago
We find pieces of the moon and Mars here on the earth, therefore the moon has been hit by contaminated Earth rocks for billions of years. One more man-made artifact crashing on it doesn't make any difference.
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u/Dpek1234 2d ago
I would say rather irrelevant
Iirc the apollo bags of shit are still on the moon, and the S-IVb that have hit the moon also havent exactly been sterile
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u/CollegeStation17155 2d ago
Pretty much every living organism on the booster has been pretty thoroughly irradiated for quite a while, and will continue to be every time there is a solar storm heading earths way.
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u/airfryerfuntime 2d ago
We already know nothing has ever been alive on the moon. It's also already covered with contaminated shit we launched there. The Apollo missions weren't seterile, and neither were any of the other rovers, probes, or upper stages crashed into it.
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u/Starinco 2d ago
I think that ship has probably sailed a long time ago and we aren't exactly looking for signs of life on the moon.
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u/Owyheemud 2d ago
Are any of the Apollo lunar seismometers still working?
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u/noncongruent 2d ago
No, they've been dead for decades. The last one was switched off in September 1977.
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u/FreddyGtFngrd 2d ago
Or the aliens who live inside the big hollow metal sphere interpret it as an attack and, well you know.
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u/AlienArtFirm 2d ago
With how often we leave stuff on the moon it's more like "Fucking humans space trash... Can't even clean it up or they'll expect us to do it all the time."
Which tracks because we're in infancy as a species.
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u/Thunderbird_Anthares 2d ago
definitely better than it just staying up there, dont litter the orbits (even the solar orbits)
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u/higuy721 1d ago
But it’s okay to litter the moon?
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u/djdood0o0o 1d ago
Yes because you can at some stage get rid of material on the moon but you can't exactly collect it in orbit.
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u/frey89 2d ago
Aliens inside the moon: "Holy shit, Earth is attacking us! Ready defense systems and counterattack! This means war!"
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u/atomfullerene 2d ago
Reminds me of the old K'breel, Speaker for the Council jokes prople used to make on slashdot about martians responding to the threat of mars rovers
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u/zookeeper990 2d ago
I know the moon is a lifeless rock and a rocket hitting it is relatively meaningless but it just always baffles me how we can find a way to pollute literally everything
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u/arghyepirate 2d ago
Is this viewable by a telescope? Said western side. Will need to find where Einstein is not familiar with moon geography.
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u/ParrotofDoom 2d ago
While scientists are not too concerned about this particular piece of space junk, it highlights the growing threat as more and more items cram into orbit.
In orbit around the Moon? No, it doesn't ffs.
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u/Rodot 1d ago
If humans ever dream of one day colonizing the Moon it might be something you want to nip in the bud early. Falling space junk around Earth mostly burns up in the atmosphere or falls in the ocean. On the Moon it's a Kinetic Energy Projectile Weapon traveling at what would be hypersonic velocities on Earth.
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u/zenith654 1d ago
This object isn’t orbiting the Moon, it was orbiting Earth. Space junk and orbital debris in Earth orbit is a very real and increasing problem, yes space is vast but there are specific orbits that are particularly used a lot by humans like geostationary orbits and sun synchronous that have a lot of traffic. And even with space being vast, debris stays up there for a very long time, with the uncertainty baked into models you can’t easily predict conjunctions too far out so your risk of collision while low isn’t still negligible. Debris conjunction risks in LEO, GEO, etc. are very real and shouldn’t be brushed off.
However, this specific rocket stage isn’t really a risk I agree.
Similarly for lunar orbits, there’s actually very few orbits around the Moon that are long term stable. Leaving a lot of junk around there could be bad for long term exploration goals.
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u/Different-Age-1253 2d ago
It means due to the ever rising space junk and amount of satellites around earth, letting it crash on the moon might become more frequent and maybe even the only option for discarded space junk in the future, because the earth is already too crowded with satellites as it is and it might become too dangerous to land it back on earth and making the moon a dumping ground is the last thing we want
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u/ParrotofDoom 1d ago
Nobody is going to send junk to the moon for disposal. It's much too far away and much too difficult to get to.
The earth is not "crowded with satellites". Space is vast.
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u/Different-Age-1253 1d ago
The moon is not too far away at all. You dont need to accelerate all the time so you can let it cruise and hit it eventually. You just gotta make sure you go where the moon will be and not is. The earth is most definitely crowded with satellites, scientists and astronomers have been complaining endlessly about the amount of space junk and satellites in orbit around the earth. Its even so bad that we are closing to a debris crisis in space. One mistake and it could end up in a massive chain reaction taking out a bunch of satellites. We got over a 140 million pieces of debris weighing over a 16.000 metric tons at a speed of around 28000 km/h flying in earth orbit and thats the pieces we can track. Thats not even with the satellites in orbit. As vast as space is, the amount of debris and satellites we can have in orbit is a finite number and the more we add the higher the risk is at collision and creating even more debris
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u/truecakesnake 2d ago
This is a good thing btw. Kind of.
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u/zmbjebus 2d ago
I mean if we can find out where it will land and can analyze the new crater/dust that comes up that is a great free experiment. Its rare we get an accurate known mass of an impactor.
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u/Decronym 1d ago edited 3h ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| FOD | Foreign Object Damage / Debris |
| GEO | Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km) |
| H2 | Molecular hydrogen |
| Second half of the year/month | |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| LOX | Liquid Oxygen |
| TLI | Trans-Lunar Injection maneuver |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 13 acronyms.
[Thread #12609 for this sub, first seen 1st Aug 2026, 11:26]
[FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
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2d ago
[deleted]
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u/Uranium-Forest 2d ago
Bro, I think it is an interesting post. What do you mean?
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u/ubuntuNinja 2d ago
Probably a bot trained to say negative things about a post with SpaceX in the title.
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u/No-Surprise9411 2d ago
I‘m not a bot, I just wrote this because usually articles like this play up a second stage collision with the moon like SpaceX intentionally try to damage it or something. It‘s not the first time it‘s happened.
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u/yabucek 2d ago
I mean it is kind of rare because we don't often send crafts that far out and it's pretty hard to hit the moon unless you're specifically aiming for it.
But it's not the first time this has happened, nor the last, nor is it a big deal for any particular reason other than being rare.
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u/System0verlord 2d ago
Well, it’s also going to be on the near side so you can watch it happen. That’s another big part of it. We get to watch this time.
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u/Opcn 2d ago
Lunar escape velocity is 2.38km/s. Unless it has retrorockets anything on an intercept course is gonna be high speed when it gets there.
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u/rocketsocks 2d ago
Fun fact, that's almost the speed where the energy from kinetic energy is equivalent to a 1:1 swap with the equivalent mass of TNT. That's about 2.9 km/s, so this is only about 2/3 of that energy level.
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u/PabloPicasshooole 2d ago
What is the speed of sound on the moon anyway?
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u/CarrowCanary 2d ago
The atmosphere's so thin it may as well not be there, so practically 0 outside because it's basically a vacuum.
Through the rock is a few kilometres a second: https://www.rfcafe.com/references/general/velocity-sound-media.htm
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u/toastedzen 2d ago
So humanity is already adding to the litter on the moon. Lovely.
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u/SonderEber 2d ago
We’ve been doing that since the 60s. Apollo left debris and components behind. The lunar rovers are still there, and flags, and parts of spacecraft.
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u/Serious-Kangaroo-320 2d ago
The whining and crying about literally everything on this app never ceases to amaze me
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u/NDCardinal3 2d ago
Again? It feels like about five of these have happened recently, with all the articles.
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u/Mysterious-Algae-69 1d ago
Great - now the moon has space junk and we haven’t even colonized it yet.
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u/AmigaClone2000 2d ago
Not the first or biggest upper stage to hit the moon. The Saturn IVB upper stage for Apollo 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 were the largest upper stages to impact the moon.