A SpaceX rocket is on a collision course with the moon after spending almost seven years hurtling through space, experts say. The four tonne rocket is expected to hit the Moon at a velocity of 2.58km/s at some point in the coming weeks.

The rocket was originally launched from Florida in February 2015 as part of an interplanetary mission to send a space weather satellite on a million-mile journey.

The space junk is being tracked by Bill Gray, the creator of the Guide software used to monitor near-Earth objects, asteroids, minor planets and comets.

“Space junk can be a little tricky,” Gray noted in a post to his Project Pluto website.

Gray said, “I have a fairly complete mathematical model of what the Earth, Moon, Sun and planets are doing and how their gravity is affecting the object. I have a rough idea of how much sunlight is pushing outward on the object, gently pushing it away from the Sun.”

He said, “However, the actual effects of that sunlight are hard to predict perfectly. It doesn’t just push outward; some of it bounces ‘sideways’.”

Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, wrote that the impact was due on 4 March but was “not a big deal”.

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