NASA's Lunar Orbiter Captures Crater from Rocket Impact
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has captured images of a new crater on the Moon, caused by the impact of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket upper stage that crashed into the lunar surface on August 5. The images, taken on August 11 and 12, were released on Tuesday, August 18, according to USA Today. The crater's estimated size varies: NASA scientists believe it is about 6 feet wide and less than 10 feet deep, based on the length of its shadow, as reported by PetaPixel. In contrast, USA Today reports the crater is approximately 60 feet wide and 10 feet deep, about the size of a six-story building. Mashable describes it as wider than an NBA basketball court and up to 10 feet deep. These differing estimates highlight the difficulty in measuring lunar features from orbit.
The Falcon 9 upper stage, manufactured by SpaceX, was part of a mission that launched in January 2025 from Cape Canaveral, carrying two commercial lunar landers: Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost and ispace's Resilience. According to Mashable, after releasing both spacecraft, the booster remained in space as intended. Blue Ghost went on to make a successful lunar landing, a first for a privately built spacecraft, while Resilience crashed during its own landing attempt.
The upper stage was left in an unstable orbit after using more thrust to get the lander into an orbit that could reach the Moon, as detailed by USA Today. It orbited Earth once every 26 days, pulled by solar activity and gravitational forces, eventually making moonfall near Einstein Crater, close to the boundary between the lunar near and far sides. The crash wasn't planned, and SpaceX stated that the collision wasn't intentional, emphasizing that the company works "to be as responsible as possible with hardware left in space to ensure space safety."
The Search and Imaging Challenge
Finding the impact site was no easy task. NASA said in a press release that it required "global coordination among experts and hobbyists" who tracked the rocket's trajectory to locate its predicted crash landing location. Independent astronomers used public data to trace the rocket's path, and NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies refined the predicted impact zone. According to Mashable, the center passed the information to South Korea's Danuri orbiter team, which released its orbiter images on Aug. 6 and sent precise coordinates back to NASA. Danuri, operated by the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA), captured the first photos of the crash site shortly after impact, as reported by PetaPixel.
Imaging the site was particularly challenging. LRO flies roughly 60 miles above the Moon while traveling one mile per second, and it circles the Moon from pole to pole every two hours. To photograph a specific spot, the spacecraft must wait until that location turns into view, which took six days in this case. Engineers tilted the orbiter so its cameras would point toward the crater each time it passed overhead. The timing had to be precise: if the camera snapped even 10 seconds too early or too late, the target would drift off-center by 10 miles, according to the agency.
Implications for Future Missions
NASA wanted these images to hone its ability to pinpoint fast-moving objects that slam into the Moon, which could help protect future astronaut crews by improving how quickly and accurately it can track impact risks. The images, taken from different viewing angles, bring out different features that allow NASA to measure the crater. Each image is enlarged two times and shows an area of the Moon about 1,000 feet wide, as described by PetaPixel.