A Falcon 9 rocket will hit the Moon this summer at seven times the speed of sound

A discarded Falcon 9 upper stage will slam into the Moon this summer at seven times the speed of sound, a violent and unintended monument to space debris that NASA and SpaceX cannot control. The impact zone is expected to leave a crater 15 meters wide, larger than the typical lunar meteorite strike. This event is faster than the average lunar impact from natural debris by a factor of two, and it dwarfs the controlled crash of NASA's LCROSS mission in 2009, which was deliberately targeted and produced a crater only 5 meters across. The debris highlights the growing problem of orbital junk, with no international protocol to prevent such collisions.