NASA said it took six days for the orbiter to fly over the SpaceX crash site.
Engineers had to tilt the spacecraft so its cameras would point toward the crater as it flew 60 miles above the lunar surface at 1 mile per second.
The new photos reveal that the crater measures about 60 feet across. Based on the length of its shadow, scientists found that it is most likely less than 10 feet deep, according to NASA.
The images also show bright and dark streaks emanating from the crater. The darker rays are surface dust and rocks that were kicked up by the collision from a depth of around 1.5 feet, according to NASA. The brighter streaks near the crater rim were formed by fresher material excavated from deeper underground after the booster smacked into the moon’s surface.
NASA said the crater center is at an elevation of roughly 1,700 feet.
Shortly after the crash, a telescope in Chile spotted a debris plume from the cosmic collision. Later, the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, which launched in 2022 as South Korea’s first moon mission, flew over the impact site and snapped photos of the crater and the ejected material in its vicinity.
The Falcon 9 crash was only the second known case in which a rocket h unintentionally hitting the lunar surface. The moon has withstood countless impacts from asteroids and other cosmic objects over its life, but it is very rare for a human-made object to slam uncontrolled into its surface.
In 2022, what was thought to be the upper stage of a Chinese rocket that sent a test capsule to the moon in 2014 smacked into the far side of the moon, carving out a snowman-shaped double crater that the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted months later. China has denied that its spacecraft was involved.
The SpaceX crash ignited fresh debates about sustainability issues in space, particularly as countries like the U.S. and China race to put their astronauts and infrastructure on the moon.
In a statement on Aug. 5, SpaceX said it tries to properly account for its hardware after missions.
“We actively work to be as responsible as possible with hardware left in space to ensure space safety, including for more complex missions,” it said. “In this case, over time, solar activity and gravity led the second stage toward the Moon. Impacts like this are rare, but they can happen with objects in these types of orbits, and we worked with NASA on the optimal disposal solution.”
Quelle: NBC News
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NASA’s LRO Images Falcon 9 Crater on Moon, Learns New Details
Between Aug. 11 and 12, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured a series of images of a new crater on the Moon. The crater formed on Aug. 5, when a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage impacted the surface following its January 2025 launch of the Firefly Blue Ghost 1 mission.
To capture imagery of the impact, engineers tilted the spacecraft so its cameras would point toward the crater each time LRO passed about 60 miles above the Moon, traveling 1 mile per second. The orbiter circles the Moon from pole to pole every two hours, while the Moon slowly rotates underneath it. To photograph a specific spot, the spacecraft must wait until that location turns into view, which took six days in this case.
Getting the pointing right was only half the challenge; timing had to be accurate as well. If the camera snapped even 10 seconds too early or too late, the target would drift off-center by 10 miles.
Because of the variety of viewing angles, scientists could see the crater under multiple lighting conditions that revealed unique features. In images where the crater rim stood out, scientists measured its 60‑foot width. Scientists also determined the crater is less than 10 feet deep based on the length of its shadow.
To capture these details, LRO used its Narrow-Angle Camera, which can spot features as small as 3 feet wide.
The images above show bright and dark rays stretching out from the crater. The darker streaks are made of surface dust and rocks altered over a long time by solar wind, galactic cosmic rays, and micrometeorite impacts. This weathered material was excavated by the collision from 1.5 feet into the lunar surface. The brighter streaks near the crater rim are made of fresh material excavated from deeper underground.
Finding the impact site took global coordination among experts and hobbyists. Independent astronomers first identified the rocket’s trajectory using publicly available data. NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, which tracks natural objects that could pose hazards to Earth for the agency’s Planetary Defense program, used this opportunity to test and validate tools and techniques for predicting impacts.
Based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the center incrementally refined the trajectory until identifying the location of impact, which it provided to the Republic of Korea for their Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (Danuri) team. The team used the high-resolution LUTI camera on Danuri a few hours later to image the crater, finding the prediction was accurate to about 0.6 miles.
After capturing images of the crater, the Danuri mission sent coordinates to NASA’s LRO team to help refine their follow-up imaging sequence. Comparing their new crater images with the pre-impact images, the LRO team updated the crater center coordinates: 19.4759°N, 266.7138°E, 511 meters elevation.
Quelle: NASA