NASA satellite photographed a fresh crater on the Moon left by Elon Musk's rocket

NASA released unique images of the impact site where the upper stage of the Falcon 9 rocket struck the Moon. Thanks to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), scientists were able to inspect details of the new crater and study the lunar soil lifted to the surface after the impact 5 of August 2026 year.

What mark did the SpaceX rocket leave

LRO satellite cameras captured the consequences of the SpaceX Falcon rocket 9's fall, which in January 2025 launched the Blue Ghost mission 1 by Firefly into space. After completing its job, the rocket stage became an uncontrolled object, whose trajectory NASA experts tracked with particular care, NASA Science reports.

The collision occurred at the beginning of August, but six days were needed to obtain quality footage from the probe until the area of surface returned to the cameras' field of view.

Images collected between 11 and 12 in August by the NASA orbital station, six days after the upper stage of a rocket collided with the Moon / NASA collage

Anatomy of a Moon crater

Scientists determined that the impact created a crater about 18,3 meters wide. Its depth, judging by the length of the shadow, does not exceed 3 meters. The images clearly show bright and dark rays emanating from the epicenter.

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The dark bands consist of dust and rocks that were exposed to solar wind and cosmic rays for a long time directly on the surface. These materials were ejected from the depth by the impact to approximately 0,46 meters. In contrast, bright patches are fresh regolith lifted from deeper lunar layers.

Surface comparison of the Moon before and after the rocket impact / NASA photo

Technical difficulty of the shot

To capture these photos, engineers pitched the LRO spacecraft as it flew at a height of about 96,6 kilometers above the Moon's surface at a speed of 1,6 kilometers per second. The precision was critical: an error in timing by just 10 seconds would have shifted the target by 16,1 kilometers from the frame center. The spacecraft used its Narrow-Angle Camera, capable of recognizing objects smaller than 1 meters.

Finding the impact site was the result of collaboration among international experts and amateur astronomers. The Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory used the case as a test to validate collision-prediction tools, which are important for planetary defense.

Experts passed coordinates to the South Korean orbiter Danuri, whose LUTI camera confirmed the forecast accuracy with an error of less than 1 kilometers. Later these data helped the LRO team refine its own imaging sequence to obtain the most detailed pictures.