SpaceX’s Falcon 9 wasn't the first rocket to crash into the moon. Here's a rundown

A rocket body impacted the moon on March 4, 2022 near Hertzsprung Crater, creating a double crater roughly 95 feet (29 meters) wide in the longest dimension, as seen in this photo taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

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.

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 Falcon 9 part was unintentional — solar activity and gravitational forces caused the stage to slam into the moon — the impact offered a rare opportunity to try to observe the flash from the impact and the plume of lunar material it sent flying.