NASA has confirmed the creation of a new crater on the moon’s surface after a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket upper stage collided with it on August 5. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured the first images of the impact site between August 11 and 12, revealing a 60-foot-wide, 12-foot-deep crater.
Engineers maneuvered the LRO to tilt its cameras downward as it passed 60 miles above the crash site, using its Narrow-Angle Camera to resolve features as small as three feet. The alignment required six days of waiting for the spacecraft and the impact site to coincide, given the Moon’s rotation and the LRO’s rapid orbital speed.
The collision originated from a January 2025 SpaceX mission that delivered lunar landers to orbit but left the upper stage stranded. Gravity and solar activity eventually pulled it into the moon. Before-and-after photos show the crater’s dark ejecta blanket—older surface material—and lighter subsurface debris along the rim.
