By Ian Sample,
Published by The Guardian, 22 December 2025
As number of lunar satellites soars, sites will be marked out where defunct hardware can be crash-landed
Patches of the moon are destined to become spacecraft graveyards where dead lunar satellites and other defunct hardware can be crashed into the ground, far away from sites of cultural and scientific importance, researchers say.
The number of satellites circling the moon is set to soar in the next two decades as space agencies and private companies build moon bases and dabble with mining operations and constructing scientific instruments on the barren terrain.
The surge in activity will be supported by constellations of lunar satellites for positioning, navigation and communications. But when the satellites run out of fuel, operators have few options other than steering them into the ground, where they will be smashed to pieces.
“These satellites will have to be crash-landed on the moon, so it will potentially become a rubbish site,” said Dr Fionagh Thomson, a senior research fellow at the University of Durham, who convened an expert panel on the issue at the Space-Comm meeting in Glasgow in December.
Beyond scattering satellite parts across the surface, researchers fear that if scores of dead satellites rain down across the moon, they risk causing damage to buildings, scientific instruments, historic sites such as the first astronaut footprints, and pristine sites of scientific interest.
With impact speeds of 1.2 miles per second, the collisions will produce intense vibrations, which could disrupt the sensitive instruments scientists want to build on the moon. The scars carved into the surface are expected to stretch for tens of metres and produce vast clouds of abrasive dust that could obscure telescopes and damage equipment.
“It’s not an immediate concern, given the surface area of the moon, but the more lunar satellites there are, the greater the chance that some may crash into scientifically or culturally sensitive locations,” said Prof Ian Crawford of Birkbeck, University of London. “We do need a plan going forward.”
Satellite operators routinely use Earth’s atmosphere to dispose of dead satellites drifting around the planet. Each year, thousands of defunct satellites are incinerated on re-entry. But because the moon has no atmosphere, lunar satellite operators need other solutions.
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