Bill Gray says Falcon 9 upper stage will hit Moon August 5
Bill Gray says a falcon 9 upper stage that launched in early 2025 is expected to strike the Moon at 2:44 am ET on August 5, 2026. He identified the object as 2025-010D and said it should hit near Einstein Crater on the Moon’s near side.
The impact speed is expected to reach 2.43 km a second, or 5,400 mph, about seven times the speed of sound. Gray said the Moon has no atmosphere, so the 13.8-meter stage with a 3.7-meter diameter will strike intact.
Gray’s tracking report
Gray published the report after tracking the object since the January 15, 2025 launch that carried Firefly’s Blue Ghost and ispace’s Hakuto-R lunar landers. The landers separated after launch, the fairing reentered Earth’s atmosphere, and Blue Ghost later touched down on the Moon.
He said the upper stage kept orbiting Earth instead of re-entering and had a few close passes by the Moon and Earth. In his report, Gray wrote, “The upper stage, 2025-010D, also kept orbiting the Earth, but was a bit higher and didn’t re-enter” and “It’s had a few close passes by the Moon and Earth, but nothing that was close enough to look like a possible impact.”
Einstein Crater impact
Gray said the object had accumulated 1053 observations as of February 26, 2026. He said the event will probably be too faint to see from Earth-based telescopes, even though the Moon will be visible to the eastern half of the United States and Canada and to much of South America at the time.
He said the strike should create a small crater and do no damage otherwise. Gray also said there is no risk from the impact to anything on the Moon.
Future lunar disposal
The reported strike lands in a narrow gap between routine lunar activity and long-term traffic management. The same body Gray tracked came from a mission that delivered lunar landers, and the article says the cadence of launches on Falcon 9 and other rockets to the Moon is likely to increase by something like a factor of 10.
The article says launch companies can avoid similar impacts by putting upper stages into disposal orbits around the Sun, keeping them from hitting Earth or the Moon in perpetuity. That approach is the practical step lunar launch providers can use if they want to keep spent stages out of future impact paths.
