OK, rockets have slammed into the Moon before.
But this is the first time the crash has been accidental.

How the heck can you can have an unidentified rocket out past the Moon? Oh wait, see below, it is now identified.

https://www.space.com/rocket-moon-crash-march-4-scientific-excitement

The rocket stage is on track to slam into Hertzsprung Crater on the far side of the moon on Friday at 7:25 a.m. EST (1225 GMT).

Originally, the rocket body was thought to be the upper stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) in 2015.

However, the object is now tied to the Chinese Long March 3C rocket that launched China’s Chang’e 5-T1 mission in 2014. Chang’e 5-T1 looped behind the moon and returned to Earth to test atmospheric re-entry capabilities for 2020’s Chang’e 5 lunar sample return mission. Chang’e 5-T1 also carried a secondary payload of scientific instruments in the upper stage of the Long March rocket on behalf of the Luxembourg-based company LuxSpace.

The rocket was identified as Chinese by the colour of the paint, as seen from Earth. But this has been denied by China.

https://www.space.com/rocket-moon-crash-march-4-what-to-know

The rocket stage will impact the far side of the moon, out of range of ground telescopes and likely also away from the immediate view of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The LRO will seek out the crater after the event. and study the effect of ejecta from the crash on the Moon’s atmosphere.

https://www.the-sun.com/tech/4805830/spacex-rocket-moon-crash-watch-live-crater/

The rocket is the size of a school bus. It has been described as a one-tonne hunk of space junk, and will collide on the far side of the Moon at a speed of around 2.6 km per second. It is expected to leave a 65-foot-diameter crater on the surface.

“The rocket was identified as Chinese by the colour of the paint, as seen from Earth.”

Huh? If they can identify the paint from Earth, then why can’t you see the Apollo landers from Earth?

Kingy said:

“The rocket was identified as Chinese by the colour of the paint, as seen from Earth.”

Huh? If they can identify the paint from Earth, then why can’t you see the Apollo landers from Earth?

Guessing.

It was most likely seen at an earlier stage.

Tau.Neutrino said:

Kingy said:

“The rocket was identified as Chinese by the colour of the paint, as seen from Earth.”

Huh? If they can identify the paint from Earth, then why can’t you see the Apollo landers from Earth?

Guessing.

It was most likely seen at an earlier stage.

As for the moon stuff

Hubble’s 94.5-inch mirror has a resolution of 0.024″ in ultraviolet light, which translates to 141 feet (43 meters) at the Moon’s distance. In visible light, it’s 0.05″, or closer to 300 feet. Given that the largest piece of equipment left on the Moon after each mission was the 17.9-foot-high by 14-foot-wide Lunar Module, you can see the problem.

https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/how-to-see-all-six-apollo-moon-landing-sites/

Kingy said:

“The rocket was identified as Chinese by the colour of the paint, as seen from Earth.”

Huh? If they can identify the paint from Earth, then why can’t you see the Apollo landers from Earth?

Spectroscopy. Analysing the light that’s reflected from it.

Who predicted the collision?

In January, space trackers calculated that a piece of manmade debris was on course to hit the Moon and it was first spotted by Bill Gray, who writes the popular Project Pluto software to track near-Earth objects.

Who predicted the collision, continued

“Back in 2015, I (mis)identified this object as 2015-007B, the second stage of the DSCOVR spacecraft,” Gray wrote on February 12.

“We now have good evidence that it is actually 2014-065B, the booster for the Chang’e 5-T1 lunar mission.”

—-

So its been tracked for a while with plenty of time for a spectrograph reading

https://www.space.com/rocket-moon-crash-march-4-scientific-excitement

Enter Vishnu Reddy and his student researchers at the University of Arizona in Tucson, who have made observations of the errant upper stage.

Reddy and his team studied the rocket stage on Feb. 7, obtaining a spectrum of the object. They utilized the Rapid Astronomical Pointing Telescopes for Optical Reflectance Spectroscopy (RAPTORS) system, a telescope atop a building on the University of Arizona campus.

“Then we compared its spectrum to those of a Falcon 9 second-stage booster of similar provenance as the DSCOVR mission and a Chinese booster of similar provenance as the Chang’e 5-T1 mission,” Reddy told Inside Outer Space. The differences in spectrum were chiefly due to the type of paint used by the Chinese, the team determined.

You would rather ‘It Came Home to Roost’?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-05/space-junk-abandoned-rocket-hits-moon/100884976