NASA measures crater left by Falcon 9 on the Moon

Six days after a Falcon 9 upper stage struck the Moon, NASA engineers tilted the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter toward the fresh scar. On Aug. 11 and 12, its Narrow-Angle Camera captured the crater from several angles, turning a difficult trajectory problem into a measured lunar landmark: 60 feet wide and less than 10 feet deep.

The timing left little room for error. LRO passed about 60 miles above the Moon at 1 mile per second, circling from pole to pole every two hours while the lunar surface slowly rotated beneath it. If the camera had fired even 10 seconds too early or too late, the target would have shifted 10 miles off-center.

Changing sunlight made the crater easier to read. Darker rays contain surface dust and rock altered by solar wind, galactic cosmic rays, and micrometeorite impacts; the collision excavated that weathered material from 1.5 feet below the surface. Brighter streaks near the rim came from fresher material deeper underground. The camera can distinguish features as small as 3 feet wide.

The crater was not found by NASA alone. Independent astronomers used publicly available data to identify the upper stage’s trajectory, while NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies refined impact predictions. The center sent its result to South Korea’s Danuri team, whose high-resolution LUTI camera imaged the site a few hours later and found the prediction accurate to about 0.6 miles.

So what changes in practice? Scientists now have a clean before-and-after view of a known lunar impact, plus a test of the tools used to predict where spacecraft will hit the Moon. Danuri’s coordinates helped LRO plan its own imaging, and the updated crater center is recorded at 19.4759°N, 266.7138°E, 511 meters elevation. The measurements come from NASA’s orbiting instruments and coordinated mission teams; they describe one impact, not yet a general prediction accuracy for every lunar landing or collision.