NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured sharp before-and-after images of a fresh 60-foot crater on the moon, carved when a spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage plowed into the lunar surface at 5,400 mph on August 5 following a January 2025 launch.
The impact site, located near Einstein Crater, has provided scientists with a rare up-close look at how orbital debris interacts with the lunar surface. The spent rocket body had been wandering through space for more than a year and a half after launching a pair of private moon landers in 2025 as part of NASA’s commercialization push. That mission sent Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander and a spacecraft built by Japanese company ispace toward the moon, with Blue Ghost succeeding in its touchdown while its counterpart crashed.
Tracking the Trajectory and Spotting the Scar
Finding the impact site required global coordination between independent astronomers, hobbyists, and space agencies. Independent observers first identified the rocket’s trajectory using publicly available data. NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, operated for the agency’s Planetary Defense program out of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, used the event to test and validate tools for predicting impacts. The center incrementally refined the trajectory before handing the estimated coordinates to South Korea’s space team.
