{"id":623178,"date":"2026-08-06T07:58:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T07:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/623178\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T07:58:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T07:58:19","slug":"chemical-fingerprints-what-scientists-detected-after-spacex-rocket-crashed-into-moon-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/623178\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Chemical fingerprints\u2019: what scientists detected after SpaceX rocket crashed into moon \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A telescope in Chile has captured evidence of the impact<\/a> caused by part of a SpaceX rocket slamming into the moon<\/a> while travelling at 8,690km\/h.<\/p>\n

The European Southern Observatory\u2019s (ESO) Very Large Telescope observed \u201cspectral lines\u201d \u2013 a colourful illustration of the sodium and lithium gas \u2013 in the plume of lunar dust stirred up by the impact.<\/p>\n

The ESO telescope recorded these \u201cchemical fingerprints\u201d of the plume, which were visible for five to 10 minutes, the observatory said. The plume measured a few tens of kilometres in size, according to Carl Schmidt, an astronomer from Boston University\u2019s Center for Space Physics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Benjamin Fernando of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said earlier the collision could provide valuable data for future seismic experiments and assessing \u201chazards from artificial space debris impacts\u201d. Nasa<\/a> hopes to soon establish a sustained human presence on the moon, making it critical to better understand space debris in lunar orbit.<\/p>\n

The impact occurred near the moon\u2019s terminator line, or the boundary of its shadow between the sunlit side and its far side. Similar to past objects that have hit the moon, the rocket stage kicked \u200bup a plume of lunar dust that was briefly illuminated by sunlight, but difficult to spot \u200cwith the naked eye from Earth.<\/p>\n

Numerous satellites were orbiting the moon but none were in the right place at the right time to witness the crash, which occurred about 6.35am on Wednesday. The piece of the rocket was the height of a five-storey building and weighed four tonnes.<\/p>\n

Nasa and its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter probe and South Korea\u2019s Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter are planning to take images of the site after impact, which may show the wreckage of the rocket, but it could take days to receive that information.<\/p>\n

However, the manner in which the impact plume \u200cinteracted with the sunlight allowed astronomers to glean some clues about its composition.<\/p>\n

The sodium gas in the spectra is believed to have originated from the lunar soil, while the traces of lithium may have come from \u200cthe rocket stage itself, Schmidt said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis observation did not go perfectly and this is a very crude analysis, but I wanted to share something quickly, and we can say more about these results in time,\u201d Schmidt said.<\/p>\n

Sara Webb, an Australian astrophysicist at Swinburne University, said the tremendous force of the crash would have gouged out a \u201cmassive\u201d new crater, probably 20m in diameter and 5m deep.<\/p>\n

A vast plume was anticipated, Webb said, but \u201cwhat we didn\u2019t expect was how hard it was going to be to see this impact. We had multiple telescopes and eyes on the moon watching it, and nobody caught clear imagery or shots of it actually hitting.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9 rocket from Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX launched in January 2025 carrying two lunar landers. Its booster returned to Earth, but the upper stage stayed in space to push the landers onward.<\/p>\n

The rocket stage was just one of tens of thousands of pieces of \u201cspace junk\u201d orbiting Earth. The moon routinely weathers impact from space debris including meteoroids. However, artificial collisions are less common. – Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A telescope in Chile has captured evidence of the impact caused by part of a SpaceX rocket slamming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[270],"tags":[19500,18,19,17,1024,133,451,2731],"class_list":["post-623178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-chile","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-space","tag-spacex"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117047506149210122","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}