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Did SpaceX Rocket Really Collide With Moon? Inside Space Fender-Bender

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Hey, diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle—did a SpaceX rocket crash into the moon?

While most people on Earth were unphased, several space scientists believe that part of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket—which launched from Earth on January 15, 2025—hit the moon on the morning of Aug. 5.

Experts believe the upper part of the SpaceX Falcon 9 that was carrying a pair of lunar landers—or transportation tablets to launch into the moon’s orbit to land on its surface—crashed into the moon in the early hours of Aug. 5. Bill Gray, a space tracking expert, predicted to the Associated Press that the impact was to be about 5,400 miles per hour, or seven times the speed of sound.

Although the collision itself was eclipsed by life down on Earth, a telescope in Chile spotted what astronomers have described as a plume of debris from the assumed crash, according to NBC News.

And that debris just might be visible to more people up on the night shift.

“The gravity on the moon is low,” Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Benjamin Fernando told the AP, “and there is no wind to blow the dust away.”

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As for why interest in the space fender bender entered Earth’s orbit? Fernando added, “Part of the reason for our interest in this event is to figure out how much of a hazard debris impacts pose to future astronauts.”

Meanwhile, SpaceX’s Julianna Scheiman explained the crash was unintended, but occurred because the rocket traveled too far from Earth’s orbit for it to burn up in its atmosphere.

“For high energy missions, we need to perform a different maneuver to ensure the second stage itself is safe per the appropriate rules and regulation,” Scheiman said in a press conference Aug. 3, per CNN. “We did that here for the Ispace and Blue Ghost missions’ second stage, and what has happened is essentially a mixture of solar activity and gravity forces have put it on a path towards the moon.”

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E! News has reached out to SpaceX for comment but has not heard back.

And since astronomers assure there is no possible harm to people on Earth, Dr. Paul Wiegert explained why this rare occurrence has hung the moon for some space nerds.

“What happens when an object crashes into the moon?” Wigert was posited to CNN. “We know it makes a crater, and of course it does eject material, but we don’t really understand that process in great detail.”

The crash, he explained, could provide some valuable insight. As he put it, “And now that we have more spacecraft, and soon to have astronauts on the moon, we really want to understand that process better.”

For stars who have understood the process of going to space, keep reading…

Gayle King/Instagram

Gayle King“I don’t know how to explain being terrified and excited at the same time,” Gayle King said on CBS Mornings in February when she was announced as a member of Blue Origin’s six-woman New Shepard NS-31 crew scheduled to blast off April 14. “It’s like how I felt about to deliver a baby.”The idea was “to open myself up to new adventures and step outside of my comfort zone,” said the 70-year-old cohost, who consulted ground control—i.e. her sons and BFF Oprah Winfrey—before signing up for the mission.”Once Kirby and Will and Oprah was fine with it, I was fine,” King added. “I thought Oprah would say ‘no,’ no. She said, ‘I think if you don’t do it, when they all come back and you had the opportunity to do it, you will be kicking yourself.’ She’s right.”

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Katy Perry“I was like, ‘What am I going to wear?'” Katy Perry told Elle ahead of her Blue Origin flight with King, Lauren Sánchez, Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyen, and Kerianne Flynn. “But seriously, I have wanted to go to space for almost 20 years. I was investigating all of the possible commercial options. Even when Blue Origin was first talking about commercial travel to space, I was like, ‘Sign me up! I’m first in line.’”MTV News did report in 2010 that Perry had purchased a $200,000 ticket to board a Virgin Galactic suborbital flight, when the company finally got one off the ground.”I’m so into extraterrestrial stuff,” the “E.T.” singer told the outlet around that time. “It’s very difficult for me to look up into the sky in the middle of the night and not think that our planet is one of…a bajillion. It’s really, really small. And Russell and I are interested in anything extraterrestrial. I mean, we’re going to space.” (She and then-husband Russell Brand split up in 2011.)As her 2025 Blue Origin trip approached, the 40-year-old told Elle, “I don’t have any time to be nervous; I ain’t got time to be worried. I’m going to feel something when they go, ‘10, 9, 8, 7,…’ but until then we’ve got stuff to do. We’ve got business to handle.”But best of all, Perry quipped, “Space is going to finally be glam. Let me tell you something. If I could take glam up with me, I would do that. We are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut.”

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William ShatnerWilliam Shatner was 90 when he went to space aboard a Blue Origin rocket in 2021. Once they were up there, the Star Trek alum hightailed it (as fast as floating in zero gravity would let him) to the window.And Shatner saw “a cold, dark, black emptiness,” he memorably shared in his book (coauthored with Josh Brandon) Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder upon his return. “It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. I turned back toward the light of home. I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her.“Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong.”Which made Shatner appreciate Earth all the more. “It reinforced tenfold my own view on the power of our beautiful, mysterious collective human entanglement,” he wrote, “and eventually, it returned a feeling of hope to my heart.”Wishing King luck ahead of her Blue Origin trip, Shatner said in a video message, “It’s an adventure of a lifetime. Something you never done before and you will never do again. Embrace the journey.”

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Lance BassLance Bass trained to go to space back in 2002, getting physically in sync with a Russian crew after Dutch-based space tourism company MirCorp arranged with a documentary crew to purchase a $20 million seat for the boy bander aboard a Soyuz flight to the International Space Station.But there was an insurance issue a week before launch, and Bass didn’t get to go.“If there’s no documentary, there’s no flight, so, very highly disappointed,” he reflected to Space.com in 2023, “but it was still amazing to be able to finish that training.”The ‘NSYNC alum noted that he’d still love to go to the ISS one day, but he wasn’t interested in going up “for a few minutes” on a Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic suborbital flight.

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Michael StrahanMichael Strahan said going to space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket in December 2021 was “almost like an out-of-body experience.”“It’s hard to believe it even happened,” he told his then-ABC News colleague Amy Robach at the time. “It’s a crazy feeling, like the feeling of weightlessness, the feeling when the booster goes off, the rocket goes off, and it detaches and you don’t know what’s up from down. And you’re body just goes like this, and you take off a seatbelt, but naturally, it feels natural to move.”

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Kim KardashianKim Kardashian’s then-boyfriend Pete Davidson said OK to an invitation to fly gratis alongside five paying customers on the New Shepard in March 2022, but after the flight was delayed, the Saturday Night Live star had to bow out.“Pete Davidson is no longer able to join the NS-20 crew on this mission,” a Blue Origin spokesperson announced. “We will announce the sixth crew member in the coming days.”When he was booked to go, however, Kardashian—who recalled seeing her parents cry in 1986 when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded—admitted that she was initially freaked out.“Jeff Bezos invited Pete to go to space,” she said on The Kardashians. “I really can’t believe it—that he’s gonna go. It seems like such a crazy concept to me.”Then she got to talk to Bezos, however, “and hearing how safe it is and all the testing and everything they do, I felt comfortable with [Pete] going.”And, Kardashian added, “If I didn’t have four kids, I would absolutely go.”

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Elon MuskSpaceX founder Elon Musk hasn’t actually flown in one of his company’s crafts yet, but he did say at the International Astronautical Conference in 2016 he hoped they would be ferrying humans to Mars as soon as 2024. He admitted at the time that was an “optimistic” estimate.Less optimistic, Musk also said at the time, “I think the first journeys to Mars will be really very dangerous. The risk of fatality will be high. There’s just no way around it.”He adjusted his goal in September 2024, saying that SpaceX intended to launch an uncrewed Starship to Mars by the end of 2026, with an eye on sending humans to the Red Planet two years after that.

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Leonardo DiCaprioWhile moderating a discussion at the White House between then-President Barack Obama and climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe in October 2016, Leonardo DiCaprio maybe-joked that he was onboard with the whole Mars thing.“The reality of it is, if you’re a human living on this planet—which most of us are, yeah?” Hayhoe said as they discussed the importance of electing leaders who believe in climate change. “As long as we haven’t signed up for the trip to Mars. I don’t want to know if anyone has, I think you’re crazy.”To which DiCaprio interjected, “I did.”Quipped Obama, “I think he’ll acknowledge he’s crazy.”While DiCaprio has never set the record straight on that one way or another, he once had plans to hitch a ride on a Virgin Galactic space liner. So much so that a seat on the same spacecraft, whenever it eventually took off, was auctioned off for $1.5 million at the amfAR Cinema Against AIDS charity gala—which DiCaprio was present for—during the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.But as the years went by, Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson said he was “not sure” whether DiCaprio would be on the first official flight or not.“We’ve got about 700 people signed up and they’ve been pretty committed,” he told Vulture in 2016. “Some of them have been signed up for as long as ten years since we started the program. But we’re not too long now, I think.”The VSS Unity eventually achieved the company’s first suborbital space flight in 2018, without DiCaprio aboard.

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Justin BieberIn February 2013, Justin Bieber tweeted, “I wanna do a concert in space.”NASA replied, “Maybe we can help you with that.”That June, Branson tweeted that Bieber and his then-manager Scooter Braun had signed up for Virgin Galactic suborbital spaceflights, adding, “Congrats, see you there!”To which Bieber replied, “Let’s shoot a music video in SPACE!!”None of this has happened yet.

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Tom HanksTom Hanks has been obsessed with space ever since he watched Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, when he was 12.“It presented this romantic notion of a human being in this place void of life,” the Apollo 13 star told The Guardianin 2023. “I had paid attention to the space program prior to that, but I was not hooked by the artistry or the romance of it until I saw that movie.”A month after his mind-blowing cinematic experience, he watched a Christmas broadcast of Apollo 8 orbiting the moon. “I’m actually seeing the whole Earth on my TV,” he recalled. “I am on that planet that is in the picture!”His latest space-centric project is The Moonwalkers: A Journey with Tom Hanks, an immersive film about the Apollo missions playing at Space Center Houston, which he cowrote and narrates.And count Hanks among the stars reportedly on the Virgin Galactic standby list. Though the Oscar winner said on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2021 that he had turned down a Blue Origin flight opportunity for a very down-to-earth reason.“It costs 28 million bucks or something like that,” Hanks cracked. “I’m doing good, Jimmy. I’m doing good, but I ain’t paying 28 [million] bucks.”

Justin K. Aller/Getty Images

Ashton KutcherAshton Kutcher also booked future passage with Virgin Galactic, but sold his ticket back after a heart-to-heart with Mila Kunis.“When I got married and had kids,” he told Cheddar News in July 2021, “my wife basically encouraged that it was not a smart family decision to be heading into space when we have young children.”

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Prince WilliamPrince William won’t be accused of trying to colonize Mars, thank you very much.The world should be “fixed on trying to repair this planet,” he told the BBC’s Newscast in 2021. “That really is quite crucial, we need to be focusing on this [planet] rather than giving up and heading out into space to try and think of solutions for the future.”And, the father of three noted, he admittedly preferred to measure altitude in feet, not miles.”I have absolutely no interest in going that high,” William said. “I’m a pilot…but I stay reasonably close to the ground. I’ve been up to 65,000 feet once in a plane and that was truly terrifying.”

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Cameron DiazI’d love to go to space—it really is the next frontier,” Cameron Diaz told InStyle in 2014. “Humans have to move off this planet at some point. We’re explorers—that’s what we do.”Pondering a blue moon from a beach in St. Barts at the time, the actress added, “I don’t know anything. All I know is things are bigger than me. And I surrender to everything bigger than me, whatever those things might be.”

Scott Free Prod/20th Century Fox/Kobal/Shutterstock

Michael FassbenderStarring in Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel Prometheus didn’t turn Michael Fassbender off the idea of really going to space, even if no one can hear you scream out there.“If I had a chance to go into space, I’d definitely take it,” he told W in 2012, “but it’s never been a priority for me.”

Scott Free Prod/20th Century Fox/Kobal/Shutterstock

Charlize TheronFassbender’s Prometheus costar Charlize Theron, however, was a little haunted.“If space is not the world of Ridley Scott, I’d go,” Theron told W. “When I watched Prometheus at a screening, I got so scared, I elbowed the metal chair next to me. I still have a little scar from it.” And considering she knew what was going to happen already, “That says a lot about how pathetic I am,” she continued. “I don’t think I’m made of the right stuff for space.”

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Paris HiltonAfter reports surfaced that Paris Hilton booked a passage on Virgin Galactic in 2008 (10 years before a flight took place), she said in an interview that she was actually quite scared.”What if I don’t come back?” Hilton mused. “With the whole light-years thing, what if I come back 10,000 years later, and everyone I know is dead? I’ll be like, ‘Great. Now I have to start all over.’”She never made the trip, but interviewing Branson on This Is Paris in 2021, she revealed that her now-husband Carter Reum had told her he bought a ticket to ride.“Our aim is, one day, to try to enable many people who are listening to this program to go to space, and try to drive the price down,” Branson said. “But it will take time ‘cause, you know, space is expensive.”

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