Is it true that a rocket crashed into the Moon?

Tracking systems for objects in high orbit detected, months in advance, that a spent upper stage, adrift for years, was on a collision course with the Moon. The impact occurred on March 4, 2022, on the far side, near Hertzsprung crater, at 5.226 degrees north latitude and 234.486 degrees east longitude. No one saw it live: no instrument was pointed at the area at that moment, so confirmation had to wait until NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter flew over the site again and compared old images with new ones.

The result surprised specialists. Instead of the single, rounded mark left by a compact body, a double formation appeared: an eastern crater 18 meters in diameter overlapping a western one 16 meters across, spanning about 28 meters along its longest dimension. No other known impact by a rocket stage has produced anything similar. NASA's working hypothesis is that the object carried significant mass at both ends, whereas a typical spent stage concentrates its weight near the engine and trails an empty fuel tank.

The agency acknowledges that the object's origin remains uncertain, and notes that the crater's double shape could actually help identify it. The episode illustrates a largely invisible problem: space debris is not confined to low Earth orbit but also drifts on distant trajectories that no one tracks systematically. Natural micrometeorite impacts are constant on the Moon, but artificial ones offer something nature does not: a projectile of roughly known mass and velocity, useful for studying how craters form.