Ironically, SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket might beat Starship to the Moon. Instead of gracefully landing on the lunar surface, though, a Falcon 9 rocket may soon smash into the Moon’s Einstein crater at seven times the speed of sound.

That is according to Bill Gray, an astronomer who created an object-tracking software called Project Pluto. Using his software, Gray predicts that a Falcon 9 rocket, stuck in a highly elliptical orbit since last year, will likely crash on the Moon this summer.

Falcon 9 upper stage headed for Mach 7 lunar impact

Just over a year ago, in January 2025, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched two commercial lunar landers—Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost and ispace’s Resilience—on their way to the Moon.

The Falcon 9’s 45-foot-tall (13.8 meters) upper stage was meant to return to Earth. Unfortunately, it was instead trapped in a highly elliptical orbit around our planet.

Using his Project Pluto software, Gray analyzed the upper stage’s orbit to predict its trajectory. According to the researcher, the Falcon 9 upper stage will crash on the lunar surface at 2:44 a.m. ET on August 5. It won’t be a soft landing—the rocket will smash into the Moon at a hypersonic speed of 5,400 miles per hour (8,700 kilometers per hour). That’s seven times the speed of sound, or Mach 7.

According to Gray, astronomers have made over 1,000 observations of the Falcon 9 upper stage as it’s soared around Earth. These helped to chart the rocket’s lopsided, roughly 26-day orbit. At its closest point to Earth, the upper stage comes within 137,000 miles (220,000 km) of us. At its farthest point, it’s roughly 310,000 miles (510,000 km) away in cislunar space.

“The orbit of the Moon and of this object, roughly speaking, intersect,” Gray wrote. “Usually, one goes through the intersection point while the other is someplace else. But on August 5, they’ll reach that point at the same time.”

Falcon 9 impact highlights space junk ‘carelessness’

The Falcon 9 impact “may be of some (probably minor) scientific interest, and we may learn some things from it,” Gray wrote on his Project Pluto website. “It doesn’t present any danger to anyone, though it does highlight a certain carelessness about how leftover space hardware (space junk) is disposed of.”

This is the second time the astronomer has identified a human-made object on a lunar impact trajectory—the first was China’s Chang’e-5 T1 upper stage, which flew into the Moon in March 2022.

Based on his analysis, Gray predicts the Falcon 9 upper stage will crash into or near the Einstein crater, on the Moon’s near side. However, he noted that he will have a more precise prediction closer to the impact date.

“By the time August 5 comes around, we will have a very exact idea of where and when the impact will occur, probably within a few dozen meters and a fraction of a second,” he explained. “We will be collecting data almost right up to the time of impact.”

According to Gray, the impact won’t be visible using telescopes on the ground. However, the high-velocity crash will leave a small crater. “The odds are good that the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will also be able to image the crater,” the astronomer noted.

SpaceX’s mission control probably didn’t have it on their bingo card that a Falcon 9 upper stage would reach the Moon before Starship. The company’s Starship lunar lander team is racing to fulfill its NASA obligations. The world’s most powerful rocket is behind schedule, meaning the space agency could look to Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to provide a lunar lander for Artemis IV—allowing it to stick to its schedule for a lunar landing in 2028.