SpaceX Falcon 9 Hits Moon, NASA LRO Images 60-Foot Lunar Crater

The rocket stage hit the lunar surface on Aug. 5 after remaining in space since the January 2025 launch of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander. NASA said solar activity and gravitational forces ultimately sent the stage back toward the Moon.

LRO photographed the impact site between Aug. 11 and Aug. 12, six days after the collision. The images show a crater roughly 60 feet wide and less than 10 feet deep, broadly matching NASA’s pre-impact estimate of a crater about 60 feet across.

NASA LRO Reveals Fresh Material Around Falcon 9 Crater

Scientists used LRO’s Narrow-Angle Camera, which can resolve features as small as about three feet, to study the newly formed crater under several lighting conditions.

The observations revealed both bright and dark rays extending from the impact site. NASA said the darker material consists of surface dust and rock that had been exposed for long periods to solar wind, cosmic rays and micrometeorite impacts. The collision excavated some of this weathered material from around 1.5 feet below the surface.

Brighter deposits closer to the crater, by contrast, appear to be fresher material thrown out from deeper underground during the impact. Changing sunlight and viewing angles helped researchers distinguish the crater rim and estimate its depth from the shadows it cast.

Photographing the Impact Site Required Precise Timing

Capturing the crater was not straightforward. LRO travels roughly 60 miles above the Moon at about one mile per second and completes a pole-to-pole orbit approximately every two hours.

Engineers had to tilt the spacecraft so its cameras were correctly aligned when the impact site rotated into view. Even a timing error of only 10 seconds could have shifted the target around 10 miles from the center of the image. It ultimately took six days after the impact for the necessary orbit and viewing geometry to line up.

The observations demonstrate how existing lunar spacecraft can also be used to investigate unplanned impacts and improve knowledge of how debris interacts with the Moon’s surface.

Danuri Helped NASA Pinpoint the Falcon 9 Impact

Locating the crater involved cooperation between independent astronomers, NASA and South Korea’s Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, or Danuri.

Independent observers initially tracked the upper stage using publicly available trajectory data. NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies then refined the predicted impact location as an opportunity to test techniques normally used for tracking objects that could pose a threat to Earth.

NASA passed its prediction to the Danuri team, which photographed the crater with its high-resolution LUTI camera several hours after the collision. The predicted site was accurate to about 0.6 miles.

Danuri subsequently provided coordinates to the LRO team, helping NASA refine its imaging sequence. Analysis comparing the new images with observations taken before the impact placed the crater center at 19.4759°N, 266.7138°E, at an elevation of 511 meters.