Between Aug. 11 and 12, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) photographed a newly formed crater on the Moon. The crater appeared after a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage struck the lunar surface on Aug. 5. The rocket stage had previously launched in January 2025 as part of the Firefly Blue Ghost 1 mission.
Capturing the impact site required careful maneuvering. Engineers tilted LRO so its cameras could point toward the crater as the spacecraft passed roughly 60 miles above the lunar surface at a speed of about 1 mile per second.
The orbiter circles the Moon from pole to pole once every two hours as the Moon slowly rotates beneath it. Because of this motion, LRO must wait for a particular location to rotate into a position where it can be observed. In this case, six days passed before the spacecraft had the right opportunity to photograph the new crater.
Timing was just as important as pointing the camera in the correct direction. A photograph taken only 10 seconds too early or too late would place the target about 10 miles away from the center of the image.
Scientists observed the crater from several angles and under different lighting conditions, allowing different features to become visible. Images that clearly showed the crater rim allowed researchers to measure its width at about 60 feet. By studying the length of the crater’s shadow, they also determined that it is less than 10 feet deep.
LRO recorded these details with its Narrow Angle Camera, which is capable of detecting features as small as 3 feet across.
Fresh Lunar Material Revealed by the Impact
The images show both bright and dark rays extending outward from the crater. The darker streaks contain surface dust and rocks that have been altered over long periods by solar wind, galactic cosmic rays, and impacts from micrometeorites.
The collision blasted this weathered material from as deep as 1.5 feet beneath the lunar surface. Closer to the crater rim, brighter streaks reveal fresher material that was excavated from greater depths underground.
An International Search for the Impact Site
Locating the crater involved cooperation among professional researchers and amateur observers around the world. Independent astronomers first determined the rocket’s trajectory using information that was publicly available.
NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, which monitors natural objects that could potentially threaten Earth as part of the agency’s Planetary Defense program, used the event as an opportunity to test and confirm methods for predicting impacts.
The center, based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, repeatedly refined its calculations until it identified the expected impact location. That prediction was then shared with the Republic of Korea and its Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (Danuri) team.
A few hours later, the Danuri team used the spacecraft’s high-resolution LUTI camera to photograph the crater. The observation showed that NASA’s predicted impact location had been accurate to within about 0.6 miles.
After imaging the site, the Danuri mission provided the crater coordinates to NASA’s LRO team, helping researchers improve the targeting of their own observations.
The LRO team then compared the new images with photographs taken before the impact. Using those comparisons, researchers refined the location of the crater’s center to 19.4759°N, 266.7138°E, at an elevation of 511 meters.
