Piece of SpaceX rocket believed to have crashed into the moon

NASA scientists believe remnants of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket slammed into the moon overnight, resulting in a massive explosion and debris field.The high-speed crash has not been officially confirmed, but experts say it was inevitable that the leftover rocket segment plowed into the moon Wednesday after drifting off course over the past year.IN CASE YOU MISSED IT | Elon Musk becomes world's first trillionaire as SpaceX shares jump after going publicThe upper section of the rocket, roughly the size of a five-story building and weighing nearly 9,000 pounds, is believed to have crashed at a speed of over 5,000 miles per hour. SpaceX launched the rocket last year, but the company says a combination of solar activity and gravity put it on a collision course with the moon.The moon took the hit this time, but that is not always the case. Ten to 20 tracked objects plummet into Earth's atmosphere every week due to an explosion of missions into low Earth orbit, which now includes private space companies and tens of thousands of satellites.According to the European Space Agency, more than 170 million pieces of "space junk" are currently orbiting Earth.

Former NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said the situation reflects a broader, unresolved challenge."All the different things that go up there, inevitably, gravity really works and it does come back eventually," O'Keefe said.RELATED STORY | Collisions in space are a growing concern. A plan to address it is reigniting a turf warO'Keefe noted there is a growing need for a global strategy to deal with the issue."It's something that has gotten some attention and there's a lot of talk about it, but there really isn't a fixed protocol to make that work," O'Keefe said.