The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have confirmed that the upper stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has landed on the lunar surface.

According to NASA, the collision occurred on August 5 at 9:35 Moscow time near Einstein Crater on the near side of the Moon. "Early Wednesday morning, the Falcon 9 rocket's upper stage made an unplanned impact with the lunar surface," NASA researcher Kelsey Young reported on the agency's X social media account.

The second stage of the rocket was launched in January 2025 to place two commercial landers into lunar orbit. The first stage returned to Earth without incident, but the second stage ran out of fuel to deorbit—the approximately 4-ton module has been in lunar trajectory ever since. The impact occurred at a speed of approximately 8690 km/h.

According to NASA calculations, the impact could have created a crater approximately 18 meters in diameter and up to 4 meters deep. The moment of impact was not directly recorded, but its aftermath was tracked by ESO astronomers using the Paranal Observatory telescope in Chile: for 5-10 minutes after the impact, they observed a cloud of material whose spectrum revealed lines of sodium and lithium vapor. As ESO research team leader Karl Schmidt explained, the sodium was likely ejected from lunar soil, while the lithium was deposited in the cloud from components of the rocket itself. Data analysis is ongoing, and final conclusions will be published later.

NASA emphasized that the event poses no threat to Earth. The data obtained will help study the effects of impacts on the lunar surface and will be taken into account in planning future missions under the Artemis program.