Orwell Astronomical Society (Ipswich)
Falcon 9 Rocket en route to Collision With the Moon, 04 August 2026
In early August 2026, news bulletins foretold an imminent collision of a discarded Falcon 9 upper stage (2025-010D) with the Moon in the early hours of 05 August.
On the morning of 04 August, with the rocket en route to its collision with the Moon, the sky had a hazy appearance, with a rather indistinct Moon some 10° distant from the predicted position of the rocket. Nevertheless, I persevered! Due to the rapid apparent motion of the rocket, I limited exposures to 5 seconds and recorded more than 700 exposures as the rocket crossed the 40 arcmin FoV. In the vast majority of frames, the rocket was invisible.
The following image is a sequence of stacked images that follow the rocket. They show no evidence of it tumbling.
However, by stepping through the 700 frames one at a time (very tedious!), periodic flashes were visible, lasting just one or two frames, every 32 or 33 frames. This indicates flashing and corresponds to a period of about 208 seconds. By folding the frames, an animation of the flash becomes visible! The flashes were magnitude 14 or 15.
The following is a looping gif illustrating the flashing.
Images of moving objects such as comets are nowadays often presented in two ways: (a) aligned on the stars, and (b) aligned on the object of interest. The technique can generate the illusion that the object's motion was frozen by taking a single "short" exposure with a large telescope. The technique can be applied to moving spacecraft and abandoned rocket stages. In the below image, the view is processed as if a large telescope recorded the rocket at 02:00 UT on 04 August.
Nigel Evans