A large chunk of a SpaceX rocket is hurtling on a collision course with the moon nearly 19 months after launching from Earth.

The rocket is set to slam into the moon on Wednesday at 2:35 a.m. EST at 5,400 mph. That’s about seven times the speed of sound. The expected result: a crater roughly 16 feet deep and an estimated 89-foot across.

Space tracking expert Bill Gray predicts that the impact will happen near the Einstein Crater on the moon’s sunlit western limb. That’s on the near side of the moon that faces Earth.

Can you see the impact from Earth?

Yes, but not with the naked eye. You may be able to see the plume rise above the lunar surface with the use of a telescope. The best places to see the impact are in the eastern parts of the U.S. and Canada, and much of South America. Gray says he will be watching from New Brunswick, Canada.

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What is actually crashing into the moon?

The crash was not planned. The piece that will hit the moon is the upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that launched from Cape Canaveral on Jan. 15, 2025. That rocket carried Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost-1 and ispace’s Resilience lunar landers.

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It was not SpaceX’s intent to strike the moon. Space experts say the crash could have been avoided if the upper stage had been nudged into orbit around the sun.

The chunk of space equipment is roughly 40 feet long and weighs around 10,000 pounds.

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Not the first rocket to hit the moon

This will be the second dead rocket to crash (accidentally) into the lunar surface. In 2022, a Chinese rocket hit the moon roughly eight years after launching back in 2014. That rocket segment carved a pair of craters on the far side of the moon.

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A sight to see (if you have the equipment)

This week’s collision is expected to equal the energy of three tons of TNT. The impact will send material for several miles into space. That large plume will be visible to telescopes for several minutes.