NASA Images Show 60-Foot Lunar Crater From SpaceX Falcon 9 Crash

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured before-and-after imagery of a roughly 60-foot-wide crater on the Moon, created when SpaceX’s Falcon 9 upper stage crashed on Aug. 5. The site, on the sunlit limb, shows bright and dark ejecta rays and a depth likely under 10 feet, with the crater center around 1,700 feet in elevation. Images taken Aug. 11–12 followed tracking of the booster’s trajectory, and observations also came from a Chilean telescope and South Korea’s Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter. SpaceX noted disposal challenges but emphasized space safety, marking one of the rare cases of a human-made object unintentionally impacting the Moon and fueling ongoing space-sustainability discussions.