NASA Photographs the 60-Foot Crater a Falcon 9 Stage Left on the Moon
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has photographed the crater left when a spent Falcon 9 upper stage struck the Moon on Aug. 5. The crater measures about 60 feet across.
The orbiter imaged the site on Aug. 11 and 12. Based on the shadows inside it, the crater is less than 10 feet deep, centered at 19.4759 degrees north, 266.7138 degrees east, at an elevation of 511 meters. The orbiter's Narrow-Angle Camera can pick out features as small as 3 feet.
NASA identified the impactor as the Falcon 9 upper stage left over from the January 2025 launch of the Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander.
Until the pictures came back, the impact point was known only from tracking predictions. NASA said the imaging validated its impact-prediction tools, which had placed the impact within about 0.6 miles of where the crater turned out to be.
Rays of thrown-out material surround the crater, some darker than the surrounding ground and some brighter. NASA reads the darker rays as dust and rock from roughly the top 1.5 feet, altered over long periods by solar wind, galactic cosmic rays and micrometeorite impacts, and the brighter streaks as fresher material dug from farther down.
Getting the shot took precise timing. NASA said that if the camera had fired 10 seconds early or 10 seconds late, the target would have drifted 10 miles off center.
