WASHINGTON — Space agency officials released new photographic evidence on Tuesday, August 18, 2026, detailing a 60-foot-wide impact crater on the lunar surface resulting from a spent SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stage collision.
The high-resolution images were captured between August 11 and August 12 by the Narrow-Angle Camera aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) as the spacecraft passed approximately 60 miles overhead. According to trajectory data analyzed by researchers at the agency, the upper stage struck the Moon on August 5, 2026, following a deep-space mission launched in January 2025 that carried a private lunar lander. Analysts measured the resulting depression to be less than 10 feet deep, calculated from the precise shadow lengths observed in the orbital frames.
Orbital Tracking and Imaging Challenges
Locating the precise impact site required an international collaborative effort involving orbital mechanics experts and hobbyist trackers. NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies first refined the trajectory coordinates, sharing data with international partners including the team operating South Korea's Danuri lunar orbiter before final confirmation by the LRO team.
Mission controllers noted that imaging the target presented severe technical hurdles, requiring the LRO to wait six days until the rotation of the Moon brought the site back into view. The spacecraft had to execute a precise roll maneuver while traveling at orbital velocity, requiring timing accuracy within fractions of a second to prevent the target from drifting off-center.
Analysis of Lunar Debris Patterns
Visible in the newly published photographs are distinct ray patterns of bright and dark material fanning out symmetrically from the rim of the depression. Planetary scientists explained that the darker streaks consist of surface regolith altered over long epochs by solar wind, galactic cosmic rays, and persistent micrometeorite impacts, excavated from roughly 1.5 feet below the top layer.
Conversely, the brighter material hugging the immediate rim represents fresh, unweathered subsurface ejecta brought up during the hyper-velocity collision.
What caused the newly discovered crater on the Moon?
The newly discovered crater on the Moon was caused by the high-speed impact of a spent SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket upper stage that struck the lunar surface on August 5, 2026. The impact site was subsequently photographed by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter between August 11 and August 12, 2026.
The formal scientific image release to the public occurred on Tuesday, August 18, 2026.
The next scheduled orbital calibration maneuver for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is set for September 2, 2026.