Impact thought experiment

How much energy would it take to break the Moon?

This calculator compares an incoming impactor’s kinetic energy against the Moon’s gravitational binding energy, which is the rough energy scale needed to catastrophically disrupt it rather than just crater it.

This is a first-order estimate, not a full hydrocode simulation. Real outcomes depend on impact angle, composition, porosity, and how much energy becomes heat instead of fragment motion.
Impactor mass
0 kg
Kinetic energy
0 J
% of lunar binding energy
0%
Equivalent outcome
Minor

Likely outcome: major crater

At this energy, the impact is devastating but nowhere near enough to unbind the Moon.

CrateringBasin-formingGlobal disruption
Reference assumptions used here: Moon mass 7.35×10²² kg, Moon radius 1737 km, and binding energy approximated as 3GM²/5R. This makes the catastrophic-disruption threshold about 1.24×10²⁹ J in the simplest uniform-sphere model.