Fake video of SpaceX moon collision circulates online
- Published on August 7, 2026 at 20:42
- 3 min read
- By Marisha GOLDHAMER, AFP USA
Part of a Falcon 9 rocket from Elon Musk's SpaceX slammed into the Moon as predicted on August 5, 2026, but a video purporting to capture the moment is synthetic. No satellites are known to have captured direct video of the impact from space and despite amplifying the clip, Musk and other accounts have confirmed the footage is fake.
"NEW: A SpaceX rocket has crashed into the Moon, leaving a 100 foot crater," claimed an August 5 X post sharing video of the purported moment of the collision.
The clip was reshared by Musk, who later admitted it was "fake," before quickly spreading across X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads and TikTok in languages including Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and Hindi as scientists worked to confirm the lunar impact.
The Falcon 9 rocket launched in January 2025, carrying two lunar landers (archived here). Its booster returned to Earth, but the upper stage stayed in space to push the landers onward.
A mixture of said "solar activity and gravity forces" put the remaining object on a path toward the moon, Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA Science and Dragon Programs at SpaceX, at an August 3, 2026 news conference (archived here).
Scientific observers had deemed the crash inevitable, but no assets in space are known to have captured video images as claimed on social media.
Nevertheless, the European Southern Observatory confirmed on August 5 that "the discarded upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket impacted on the Moon" (archived here).
Its Very Large Telescope "detected spectral lines" -- what it called "chemical fingerprints" -- of "sodium and lithium gas in the impact plume lasting for 5-10 minutes after" the collision.
Benjamin Fernando of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, also told AFP on August 5: "I can confirm that the impact did occur."
On August 6, the Korean AeroSpace Administration released satellite images (archived here) captured by South Korea's Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, also known as Danuri, showing changes to the surface of the Moon following the impact from the SpaceX rocket.
NASA said its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was also planning to take images of the site.
Admitted fake
Several hours after posting the video, both the @Valuetainment account and Musk admitted the clip was fake in X posts that received far less engagement (archived here and here).
The X account said the video was AI-generated, but AFP has not been able to confirm this via a SynthID watermark or using AI detection tools.
The Moon routinely weathers impact from space debris, including meteoroids. Artificial collisions are less common.
However, there are a growing number of objects in Earth's orbit, including defunct man-made objects like rocket bodies, dead satellites and fragments from launches, explosions and collisions that threaten to re-enter Earth's atmosphere or crash into functioning satellites.
While experts said the SpaceX rocket collision posed no danger to Earth, researchers warn the growing density of space junk could trigger the so-called "Kessler syndrome" cascade of collisions.
AFP previously reported on misinformation surrounding the Artemis II Moon mission.
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