E-Paper
Sign In
UAE's observatory monitors impact as SpaceX rocket piece crashes into moon
The school-bus-size object is the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket that had launched a lunar lander toward the moon in January 2025
- PUBLISHED: Wed 5 Aug 2026, 2:32 PM
A SpaceX rocket piece floating in space since last year was expected to have smashed into the moon at high speed on Wednesday. UAE's Al Khatm Astronomical Observatory attempted to observe the impact of the crash on the moon.
Astronomical calculations had indicated that the upper stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket would collide with the lunar surface on August 5, 2026 at 06:34:31 UTC.
Recommended For You
The object originated from the mission launched on January 15, 2025, in which a Falcon 9 rocket carried two lunar landers: the American Blue Ghost and the Japanese Hakuto-R. After delivering the two spacecraft onto their trajectories toward the Moon, the rocket's upper stage separated and remained in a highly elongated Earth orbit, influenced by the gravitational forces of the Earth and Moon, as well as solar radiation pressure.
Stay up to date with the latest news. Follow KT on WhatsApp Channels.
Scientists had been unable to determine with certainty whether the effects of the impact would be visible from Earth. Predictions ranged from observing a brief impact flash, to detecting a cloud of dust and rocks ejected by the collision, to seeing no visible effects at all — the latter being considered the most likely outcome.
Nevertheless, the uncertainty made the event well worth monitoring, the Astronomy Centre said in their post.
From the Al Khatm Observatory, located in Abu Dhabi, the impact was seen occurring in daylight, at 10.35am local time, when the Moon stood only 16 degrees above the horizon. These conditions made the observation particularly challenging due to daylight brightness and atmospheric turbulence, which degraded the clarity of the lunar image because of its low altitude.
According to estimates, the impact was expected to eject approximately 450 cubic meters of lunar soil and rock — equivalent to about 1,100 metric tons of material — assuming an average density of 2.5 grams per cubic centimeter.
Under the Moon's weak gravity, material launched at the estimated velocity would continue rising for about one minute, reaching an altitude of approximately 3 kilometers above the lunar surface before beginning its descent and falling back roughly one minute later.
Since the impact was expected to occur near the lunar limb (the outer edge or border of the Moon's visible disk as seen from Earth), some of the ejecta might have become visible above the lunar edge. However, the maximum angular separation from the lunar disk was estimated to be only about 1.5 arcseconds, an extremely small distance that would make detection difficult even with large telescopes.
These calculations, however, depended on numerous assumptions. Some rocks could have been ejected at significantly higher speeds — possibly as high as 300 meters per second — allowing them to remain aloft for up to three minutes and reach altitudes more than nine times greater than the baseline estimate.
Such a scenario would have improved the chances of detection. For this reason, observers were advised to point their telescopes at the predicted impact site before the event and continue monitoring for several minutes afterward in hopes of detecting either a flash or an ejecta cloud.
The Al Khatm Observatory directed its main telescope toward the Moon and continuously imaged the impact site from one minute before the predicted collision until five minutes afterward. No impact flash or visible emission of lunar material was detected.
Researchers around the world are now awaiting observations from other ground-based observatories and space telescopes that monitored the event in order to analyze the results of the impact.
An image shared by the Astronomy Centre showed the Moon two minutes after the impact. The impact site is located on the left-hand limb of the Moon, just to the left of the plus (+) marker.
They also shared a time-lapse video of the entire observation session from the observatory, which lasted approximately six minutes. Take a look:
