It will be more than a month before the moon is reached by the space company.
It will cause a bit of a mess because it is all by accident.
The spaceship that will take astronauts back to the moon will be provided by the company founded by Musk. It is years away.
The upper stage of a rocket that was launched seven years ago is going to crash into the moon on March 4.
The impact is expected to happen at 7:25 a.m. Bill Gray, developer of Project Pluto, a suite of astronomy software used to calculate the orbits of asteroids and comets, said that the rocket piece is not going to miss the moon.
Mr. Gray said that it was certain that it would hit within a few minutes.
The rocket is expected to crash into the far side of the moon on March 4.
The Falcon 9 is from the company.
The second stage is a rocket.
New Year's Day, Jan. 1, 2022.
The Falcon 9 is from the company.
The second stage is a rocket.
New Year's Day, Jan. 1, 2022.
Since the beginning of the space age, various human-made artifacts have headed off into the solar system. Mr. Musk's car was sent on the first launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket, which passed by Mars. Sometimes they come back around, like in 2020 when a newly discovered mystery object turned out to be part of a rocket launched in 1966 during NASA's Surveyor missions to the moon.
The Deep Space Climate Observatory was launched on February 11, 2015, thanks to this particular piece of debris.
The observatory, also known as DSCOVR, was headed to a spot about a million miles from Earth where it could provide early warning of potentially destructive eruptions of energetic particles from the sun.
When Al Gore was vice president, he championed an earth observation mission called Triana. GoreSat was put into storage for years until it was adapted for use as a solar storm warning system. The original purpose of Triana was to capture images of the whole of planet Earth from space.
Most of the time, the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket is pushed back into Earth's atmosphere after it has delivered its cargo to its intended destination.
The upper stage needed all of its propellant to send DSCOVR on its way to its distant destination, and it ended up in a very high, long, elliptical path around Earth.
There was a chance of a collision someday. The motion of the stage is determined by the pull of the Earth, the moon and the sun.
There is a danger to satellites and the International Space Station, but more distant objects like the DSCOVR rocket are mostly forgotten.
Mr. Gray said that he was the only person tracking these things.
This is the first time that something not intended for the moon will end up there.
The rocket stage traveled less than 6,000 miles from the moon. The moon's gravity swung it on a course that looked like it might cross paths with the moon.
Mr. Gray asked amateur astronomer to look at the object when it passed by Earth last week.
Peter Birtwhistle is a retired information technology professional who lives 50 miles west of London. The Great Shefford Observatory, a 16-inch telescope in his garden, pointed at the part of the sky where the rocket stage passed in a few minutes.
The thing is moving fast, Mr. Birtwhistle said.
The trajectory was pinned down by the observations. Next month is when the rocket stage will leave the moon for the last time. It should hit the far side of the moon out of sight.
The impact won't be seen live by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. It will pass over the impact site and take pictures.
Mark Robinson, a professor of earth and space exploration at Arizona State University who serves as the principal investigator for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's camera, said he expected four tons of metal, hitting at a speed of some 5,700 miles per hour, would carve out a divot.
Unlike meteorite strikes, scientists will know exactly the size and time of the impact because of that.
The impact site might be photographed by India's Chandrayaan-2 spaceship, which is in the moon's vicinity.
If other missions don't spot the impact site, they will end up making craters.
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