NASA Images Show New Moon Crater From SpaceX Rocket Crash
A spent Falcon 9 upper stage slammed into the lunar surface at 5,400 mph, carving a 60-foot-wide crater that NASA's orbiter has now photographed.
NASA has released new images showing the impact crater left by a defunct SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stage that crashed uncontrolled into the moon on August 5.
The roughly 10,800-pound booster, which had launched two lunar landers in January 2025, drifted in orbit before slamming into the lunar surface at an estimated 5,400 mph. There were no live views of the impact, but researchers tracked the rocket's trajectory to pinpoint the likely crash site along the western edge of the moon's sunlit side.
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured before-and-after images of the site on August 11 and 12, revealing a bright divot in the moon's terrain. It took six days for the orbiter's polar orbit to align with the crash site, and engineers had to tilt the spacecraft's cameras as it flew 60 miles above the surface at 1 mile per second.
The resulting images show a crater about 60 feet across and, based on shadow length, likely less than 10 feet deep, according to NASA. Bright and dark streaks radiate from the crater — darker rays are dust and rocks thrown up from about 1.5 feet below the surface, while brighter streaks near the rim came from fresher material excavated from deeper underground.
Shortly after the crash, a telescope in Chile spotted a debris plume, and South Korea's Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter later photographed the crater and surrounding ejected material.
The event marks only the second known case of a rocket unintentionally hitting the moon. In 2022, what was believed to be a Chinese rocket stage from a 2014 mission carved out a snowman-shaped double crater on the moon's far side, though China has denied its spacecraft was involved.
The incident has renewed debate over sustainability in space as the U.S. and China race to establish lunar infrastructure. In an August 5 statement, SpaceX said it works to responsibly manage hardware left in space. "In this case, over time, solar activity and gravity led the second stage toward the Moon," the company said, adding that it coordinated with NASA on "the optimal disposal solution."
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