On this day in space! Sept. 3, 2006: Europe's SMART-1 spacecraft crashes into the moon in lunar death dive
September 4, 2026
On Sept. 3, 2006, a European satellite named SMART-1 crashed into the moon! This wasn’t actually as disastrous as it sounds, because the spacecraft did it on purpose.
SMART-1 launched in 2003 and was the first European spacecraft to go to the moon. It was also the first mission of a program called Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology, which was a series of low-cost spacecraft…