A new crater was formed on the Moon following the crash of a SpaceX rocket. The crater was formed on August 5, when the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket struck the surface after its launch in January 2025.
According to CNN, the Falcon 9 rocket was launched on January 15, 2025, carrying two commercial lunar landers.
ΣΧΕΤΙΚΑ ΑΡΘΡΑ
After launch, the rocket’s first stage—the booster used for liftoff—returned to Earth.
The second stage, also known as the upper stage, continued on its course, propelling the robotic lunar landers toward the Moon.
When the rocket’s mission was complete, SpaceX intentionally jettisoned the upper stage into space, though it later became clear that peculiarities in orbital dynamics had placed the object on a collision course with the Moon.
On August 5, researchers and space agencies rushed to capture images of the vehicle’s impact site on the Moon.
The European Southern Observatory’s “Very Large Telescope,” located at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, was among the first to detect the impact.
Shortly thereafter, Danuri, South Korea’s lunar spacecraft—also known as the Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter—shared the first images on social media.
NASA and South Korea Collaboration
NASA announced that it collaborated with the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA) and utilized the preliminary data collected by Danuri.
As a result, engineers were able to guide the narrow-angle camera aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to capture clearer and more detailed images of the crater. NASA released the new images on Tuesday (August 18).
Absolute precision
In order for the LRO to capture the impact site, engineers had to adjust the spacecraft’s orientation so that its cameras were pointed toward the crater every time the LRO passed about 60 miles— or 96 kilometers, above the Moon, traveling at a speed of about 1 mile per second.
According to NASA, the LRO orbits the Moon from pole to pole every two hours, while the Moon slowly rotates beneath it.
It took six days for the LRO’s orbit to align with the impact site. Additional time was then required to process the images.
Imaging the impact site required extreme precision, the space agency reported, as even a 10-second delay in taking a photograph could result in the new crater shifting by up to 10 miles, about 16 kilometers, out of the frame.
“This isn’t something that concerns us.”
Although the impact was not planned, it offers scientists yet another opportunity to study the lunar surface.
“This isn’t really something that concerns us. It’s actually a technically acceptable and safe method of jettisoning material in low lunar orbit,” said NASA lunar scientist Kelsey Young, in a video posted on social media. “The Moon is constantly being hit by things: meteors, asteroids, comets.”
In fact, Young said, scientists use observations of these impacts to learn more about the Moon’s surface and to “prepare for how to protect astronauts and any future infrastructure that will be sent there.”
Source: cnn.gr
