The rocket was launched in January last year to deliver two lunar landers to the moon.
Now the upper part of the rocket has taken an unintended route and is drifting. On Wednesday, it is expected to collide with the moon at 8,700 kilometres per hour, writes the AP news agency.
The crash could have been avoided if the rocket section had been directed towards the sun. Instead, the impact is expected to create a crater and a cloud of dust and rock. The development raises concerns among scientists about the increasing amount of space debris in orbit - although the dust cloud itself is also of great scientific interest.
This isn't the first time a discarded spacecraft has collided with the moon. In 2022, a piece of a Chinese spacecraft created two craters on the moon.
