ORLANDO, Fla. — On August 5, a spent SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stage impacted the Moon, creating a new 60-foot-wide crater that NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has photographed from lunar orbit.
The upper stage from a January 2025 Firefly launch of Blue Ghost 1 struck near Einstein and Bell craters at 5,400 mph after running out of fuel and drifting on a tracked, gravity-driven path.
Spotted: Falcon 9 impact site
— NASA Solar System (@NASASolarSystem) August 18, 2026
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has captured images of a new crater on the Moon. The crater formed on Aug. 5, 2026, when a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage impacted the lunar surface. https://t.co/aqduBYwpmg pic.twitter.com/hE83yvzmIk
The images reveal a roughly 60-foot-wide, less-than-10-foot-deep pit surrounded by bright rays of freshly excavated material—slightly shallower than pre-impact models predicted.
Between Aug. 11 and 12, LRO engineers tilted the spacecraft on each pass so its high-resolution camera could capture the new crater from about 60 miles up while the orbiter raced along at roughly 1 mile per second.
The photos also let scientists pin down the crater’s location to 19.4759°N, 266.7138°E, adding a new data point for studying how human-made impacts shape the lunar surface.
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