A spent second-stage piece of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, weighing approximately 4 tons, crashed onto the surface of the Moon. After drifting in space for over a year, the rocket component struck the Earth's natural satellite on August 5, 2026, at a speed of 8,688 km/h—about seven times the speed of sound. The event was reported by RBK.

The component involved was the second stage of a launch vehicle sent into space in January 2025 to carry Firefly Aerospace's lunar lander module to the Moon. While rocket stages typically burn up in Earth's atmosphere or fall into the ocean, this stage remained stranded in space as orbital debris.

According to NASA, the impact of the four-ton hardware created a crater on the Moon measuring up to 18 meters in diameter and nearly 4 meters in depth.