NEW YORK — A four-tonne piece of a SpaceX rocket was believed to have unintentionally crashed into the Moon on Wednesday, a collision that posed no danger to Earth but is expected to leave behind a lunar crater.

While there is not yet official confirmation that the Falcon 9 upper stage struck the lunar surface, it had been expected to make impact at approximately 0635 GMT.

Nasa and its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter probe and South Korea’s Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter were planning to take images of the site after impact, but it may take days to receive that information.

Scientists and amateur stargazers alike had been looking forward to observing the sunlit plume of rubble and debris created by the smash.

“It might be possible for folks with a telescope to observe the plume of ejecta created by the impact,” said Benjamin Fernando of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the lead author on a recent paper on the anticipated impact.

“It is unclear how bright it will be, which is one of the reasons why we are looking to study this event,” the researcher told AFP before impact.

Assuming all of the propellant is spent, authors of the paper estimate the spacecraft weighs approximately 8,800 pounds (4,000 kilograms).

It was expected to slam into the Moon’s northern hemisphere near the Einstein Crater, at some 5,400 miles per hour (8,690 kilometres per hour).