NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Captures Newly Formed Moon Crater from SpaceX Falcon 9 Impact

Between August 11 and 12, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) successfully photographed a newly formed crater on the Moon, which resulted from a collision with a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage that struck the lunar surface on August 5. The Falcon 9 had been launched in January 2025 as part of the Firefly Blue Ghost 1 mission.

Engineers at NASA adeptly maneuvered the LRO to capture the impact site, tilting its cameras as the spacecraft traversed approximately 60 miles above the lunar surface at a velocity of about 1 mile per second. The orbiter completes a polar orbit of the Moon every two hours, which necessitated a wait of six days for the specific location of the crater to be in the appropriate position for observation.

Precise timing was crucial; capturing the crater even just 10 seconds too early or late could result in the target being displaced by about 10 miles. Through multiple imaging angles and varying lighting conditions, scientists were able to discern different features of the crater. They measured its width at about 60 feet and assessed its depth to be less than 10 feet, based on the shadow length. These details were captured using LRO’s Narrow Angle Camera, capable of identifying features as small as 3 feet across.

New Lunar Material Exposed

The images derived from the impact reveal both bright and dark rays extending outward from the crater. Darker streaks comprise surface dust and rocks significantly altered by solar wind, cosmic rays, and micrometeorites over an extensive period. The collision unearthed this weathered material from depths of up to 1.5 feet. In contrast, brighter streaks near the crater rim indicate fresher material excavated from deeper underground layers.

Global Collaboration to Locate the Crater

The process of locating the crater involved a coordinated effort by researchers worldwide, including independent astronomers who initially traced the rocket’s trajectory using publicly available data. NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies used the incident as a test case to evaluate their impact prediction methodologies.

Based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the center refined its calculations to pinpoint the anticipated impact location, which was subsequently communicated to the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (Danuri) team in the Republic of Korea. Just hours later, the Danuri team utilized its high-resolution LUTI camera to photograph the crater, confirming that NASA’s predicted impact location was accurate within approximately 0.6 miles.

Following the imaging, the Danuri mission shared the crater coordinates with NASA’s LRO team, enhancing the accuracy of their observations. Researchers then compared the new images with those captured before the impact, refining the crater’s center location to 19.4759°N, 266.7138°E, at an elevation of 511 meters.