A spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage slammed into the moon early Wednesday morning (Aug. 5), but it was hardly a first — human-made objects have been peppering the lunar surface for more than six decades, by design and by accident.

What Happened

The rocket stage from a January 2025 U.S. commercial lunar landing mission struck the moon unintentionally, with solar activity and gravitational forces blamed for sending it on a collision course. Astronomers worldwide kept telescopes trained on the impact site, hoping to capture the flash and debris plume; by noon EDT Wednesday there were no confirmed images of the flash itself, but a telescope in Chile did spot the resulting plume, according to the Associated Press.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman noted that such events are not rare. "This rare occurrence has decades of history, going back to the Apollo era," he wrote on social media. "The reality is that meteoroids strike the lunar surface hourly, with impacts comparable to this upper stage occurring roughly every six days."

The moon's surface already bears the scattered metal remains of missions that missed their mark or were deliberately crashed. The Soviet Union's Luna 1 was designed as an impactor but flew past the moon in January 1959; Luna 2 became humanity's first object to reach the lunar surface when it purposefully hit Sinus Lunicus on Sept. 14, 1959. NASA's Ranger 4 impacted the far side in April 1962 after a solar-array failure knocked out its systems.

During Apollo, from 1969 through 1972, spent Saturn SIV-B stages and lunar module descent stages were intentionally crashed into the moon to generate seismic data for seismometers placed by astronauts. Those measurements helped geologists learn that a rocky mantle lies beneath the outer crust.

After Apollo, deliberate impacts slowed but resumed between 1993 and today: 11 probes — four from China, three from Japan, two from the U.S., one each from India and ESA — were intentionally deorbited at mission's end. Some, like Lunar Prospector, LCROSS and Chandrayaan-1, helped confirm water by analyzing impact plumes.

Unintentional collisions are rarer but not unprecedented. A rocket body that struck the moon's far side in March 2022, leaving a small double crater, was later identified as a Long March 3C from China's Chang'e 5-T1 mission.

Why It Matters

With NASA and other agencies planning permanent lunar bases, the risk posed by discarded hardware is growing. Isaacman pointed to reusable spacecraft as part of the solution: "The future lunar base will incorporate reusable spacecraft that not only deliver astronauts and payloads, but also become part of the infrastructure itself." The Artemis Accords — now signed by 70 countries — include a provision requiring member states to dispose of spacecraft and rocket components safely.

The Bottom Line

Wednesday's Falcon 9 impact was an unplanned end for one upper stage, but it joins a long lineage of human objects meeting the moon — a reminder that as lunar traffic increases, so does the need for deliberate disposal practices.