{"id":63774,"date":"2026-08-06T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/?guid=7a986da336a73029e4214734f8b70200"},"modified":"2026-08-06T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T13:00:00","slug":"spacexs-falcon-9-wasnt-the-first-rocket-to-crash-into-the-moon-heres-a-rundown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/2026\/08\/06\/spacexs-falcon-9-wasnt-the-first-rocket-to-crash-into-the-moon-heres-a-rundown\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 wasn’t the first rocket to crash into the moon. Here’s a rundown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n
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A spent rocket body hitting the moon made headlines this week, but the reality is that the unplanned collision by a SpaceX upper stage was just the latest in a long history of human-made objects meeting their end by impacting the lunar surface.<\/p>

Astronomers around the world kept their telescopes trained on the moon early Wednesday morning (Aug. 5), when the rocket stage from a January 2025 U.S. commercial lunar landing mission was calculated to strike the celestial body. Though the fate of the SpaceX<\/u><\/a> Falcon 9 part was unintentional \u2014 solar activity and gravitational forces caused the stage to slam into the moon<\/u><\/a> \u2014 the impact offered a rare opportunity to try to observe the flash from the impact and the plume of lunar material it sent flying.<\/p>

By noon (EDT) on Wednesday, there were no confirmed reports of the impact being caught on film, but a telescope in Chile spotted the debris plume, according to the Associated Press.<\/p>

\"This rare occurrence has decades of history, going back to the Apollo<\/u><\/a> era,\" wrote Jared Isaacman, NASA's administrator, in a post to his social media accounts<\/u><\/a>. \"The reality is that meteoroids strike the lunar surface hourly, with impacts comparable to this upper stage occurring roughly every six days.\" <\/p>