A SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Hit the Moon and Blasted Open a 60-Foot Crater

SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Moon Crater — Earlier than-and-after view of the crater fashioned after a Falcon 9 higher stage struck the Moon’s floor on Aug. 5, 2026. Credit score: NASA Goddard/Intuitive Machines

A spent rocket stage has punched a brand new crater into the Moon, giving scientists a uncommon probability to observe lunar geology unfold nearly in actual time.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) photographed the contemporary impression scar between August 11 and 12, 2026. The crater appeared six days earlier, when the higher stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 slammed into the lunar floor.

The rocket had launched Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander on January 15, 2025. After finishing its function within the mission, the higher stage remained in house till photo voltaic exercise and gravitational forces despatched it on an unplanned return to the Moon.

With no ambiance to gradual incoming objects, the Moon is regularly reshaped by impacts. NASA estimates {that a} pure meteoroid carrying roughly the identical power because the rocket stage strikes the lunar floor about as soon as each six days. Human-made impacts are a lot much less widespread, making this collision a helpful alternative to check monitoring programs and research how contemporary craters kind.

NASA LRO Images Falcon 9 Crater on Moon — That is an animated before-and-after view of the crater fashioned after a Falcon 9 higher stage struck the Moon’s floor on August 5, 2026. These pictures have been taken between August 11 and 12 by the Slim-Angle Digital camera on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. These pictures are enlarged 3 times from the unique, with north going through up, and so they cowl an space a few quarter of a mile large. Credit score: NASA Goddard/Intuitive Machines

LRO Captures the Affect With Precision

Capturing the consequence was not so simple as flying over the location. Engineers needed to tilt LRO so its cameras pointed towards the crater because the spacecraft raced about 60 miles above the floor at 1 mile per second. The orbiter circles the Moon from pole to pole each two hours, however it nonetheless needed to look forward to the slowly rotating lunar floor to convey the impression space beneath its path.

Timing was equally unforgiving. If the digicam activated simply 10 seconds too early or too late, the crater would seem about 10 miles away from the middle of the body.

LRO noticed the location from a number of angles, permitting altering daylight and shadows to reveal totally different options. The clearest views of the rim confirmed that the crater measures about 60 ft throughout. Its shadow indicated a depth of lower than 10 ft, barely shallower than NASA’s preliminary estimate of about 12 ft.

An artist idea video displaying NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter circling the Moon. Credit score: NASA’s Goddard House Flight Middle Conceptual Picture Lab

Crater Rays Reveal Hidden Lunar Layers

These measurements have been potential as a result of LRO’s narrow-angle digicam can detect objects as small as 3 ft throughout. The spacecraft has surveyed the Moon since 2009, so researchers may examine the brand new pictures with earlier views and isolate the modifications attributable to the collision.

Shiny and darkish rays spreading from the crater reveal how the impression churned up totally different layers of lunar materials. The darker streaks include mud and rock from throughout the higher 1.5 ft of the floor. Over time, that materials had been altered by photo voltaic wind, galactic cosmic rays, and numerous micrometeorite strikes.

The brighter deposits close to the rim got here from higher depths. As a result of that materials had been sheltered underground, it was uncovered to house weathering for a lot much less time and seems brisker than the encompassing floor.

Where the Falcon 9 Was Likely to Impact the Moon — This picture from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter exhibits two oval areas the place the Falcon 9 higher stage was more likely to impression the Moon, based mostly on calculations by engineers with NASA’s Middle for Close to Earth Object Research. Each ellipses are 2.1 miles lengthy and 0.4 miles large. Each predictions use the identical booster-trajectory calculations, however solely the blue ellipse takes into consideration the lunar terrain. The crimson and blue dots present predicted impression areas, whereas the cyan dot exhibits the precise impression web site. Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Worldwide Staff Pinpoints the Crater

Discovering the crater required a world search that started earlier than the collision. Unbiased astronomers reconstructed the rocket’s trajectory from publicly accessible information. NASA’s Middle for Close to Earth Object Research then refined the anticipated path, utilizing the occasion to judge expertise usually utilized to asteroids and comets that may threaten Earth.

The middle, based mostly at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, despatched its predicted impression location to the Republic of Korea’s Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (Danuri) crew. Danuri photographed the brand new crater with its high-resolution LUTI digicam solely hours after the impression. The precise web site was about 0.6 miles from NASA’s prediction.

Danuri’s crew then shared the coordinates with LRO mission controllers, serving to them plan the extra detailed observations that adopted. By evaluating the contemporary crater with pictures taken earlier than the collision, NASA positioned its middle at 19.4759°N, 266.7138°E, at an elevation of 511 meters (1,677 ft).