A 45-foot chunk of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has been drifting through space since early 2025—because apparently “not our problem anymore” is a legitimate disposal strategy. This August, it becomes the moon’s problem.

According to a new report from Bill Gray, a professional astronomer and developer of the Project Pluto near-Earth object tracking software, the discarded rocket stage will collide with the moon on Aug. 5 at approximately 2:44 a.m. EDT, near a feature called the Einstein crater, on the border of the near and far sides of the moon. Gray predicts impact at roughly 5,400 mph, about seven times the speed of sound on Earth.

The good news, if you can call it that, is nobody gets hurt. Gray stresses the collision poses zero danger to the moon or any active spacecraft. The bad news is that this is apparently just an inevitability we’re fine with now.

“It doesn’t present any danger to anyone,” Gray wrote, “though it does highlight a certain carelessness about how leftover space hardware (space junk) is disposed of.”

The rocket launched in early 2025, delivering two lunar landers to the moon. Blue Ghost, built by Firefly Aerospace, touched down successfully in March 2025. Hakuto-R, developed by Japanese company ispace, lost contact and crash-landed in June. The upper stage that carried them got left to wander the Earth-moon system like a 45-foot aluminum ghost. Asteroid surveys tracked it over 1,000 times as it tumbled through orbit.

Any impact flash will be too faint to spot from Earth. The real scientific value, if there is any, will come from scientists studying whatever crater the debris leaves behind. Gray calls it “minor scientific interest.” Alrighty then. 

One junked rocket crashing into an empty moon is an embarrassment. One junked rocket crashing into a lunar base is a catastrophe. The U.S. and China both plan to ramp up lunar launches significantly, with the U.S. targeting annual moon missions via Artemis IV and V as soon as 2028, and China aiming to land its first taikonauts on the moon by 2030. Both nations have designs on permanent bases near the lunar south pole. The window for treating space junk as someone else’s problem is closing quickly.

Gray’s fix is simple enough: send spent rocket stages into orbit around the sun instead of leaving them to wander the Earth-moon system indefinitely. Nobody’s doing that yet. But at least someone’s paying attention.