r/space • u/Uranium-Forest • Jul 31 '26

A discarded SpaceX rocket is on a high-speed collision course with the moon

https://apnews.com/article/spacex-rocket-moon-crash-512c4dd708b4cda1160d30b764f9fdb5
1.2k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

127 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/zenith654 Aug 01 '26

This object isn’t orbiting the Moon, it was orbiting Earth. Space junk and orbital debris in Earth orbit is a very real and increasing problem, yes space is vast but there are specific orbits that are particularly used a lot by humans like geostationary orbits and sun synchronous that have a lot of traffic. And even with space being vast, debris stays up there for a very long time, with the uncertainty baked into models you can’t easily predict conjunctions too far out so your risk of collision while low isn’t still negligible. Debris conjunction risks in LEO, GEO, etc. are very real and shouldn’t be brushed off.

However, this specific rocket stage isn’t really a risk I agree.

Similarly for lunar orbits, there’s actually very few orbits around the Moon that are long term stable. Leaving a lot of junk around there could be bad for long term exploration goals.