{
  "id": 2227701,
  "title": "NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Images Falcon 9 Crater on Moon, With Some Help From a Korean Spacecraft",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/20/nasas-lunar-reconnaissance-orbiter-images-falcon-9-crater-on-moon",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-08-20T21:16:02.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Universe Today",
    "slug": "universe-today",
    "url": "https://www.universetoday.com/articles/nasas-lunar-reconnaissance-orbiter-images-falcon-9-crater-on-moon-with-some-help-from-a-korean-space"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "On August 5th, a SpaceX Falcon upper stage crashed into the Moon while its orbit intersected with another spacecraft's orbit. The upper stage, weighing approximately 4,000 kg, had been launched to carry lunar landers for Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost and ispace's Resilience. With a speed of almost 9,000 km per hour, it struck the Moon near Einstein crater on the Moon's near side.\n\nA few days later, on August 11th and 12th, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured images of the resulting crater. Positioned about 96 km above the lunar surface, the LRO imaged the impact from multiple angles. These images were taken over a period of four days, with each shot enlarged three times to cover an area about 300 meters wide.\n\nNASA initially predicted the crash location using the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), which tracks near-Earth objects and calculates their trajectories. Two potential landing ellipses were calculated, one accounting for lunar terrain (blue) and the other ignoring it (red). When the Korea's Danuri spacecraft, named Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, observed the impact site a few hours after the LRO, its data confirmed that the CNEOS coordinates were accurate to within roughly 1 km. SpaceX emphasized that the impact was an isolated incident and that they typically dispose of space debris responsibly, though the lunar crash was an exception due to orbital dynamics.",
  "summary": "A SpaceX Falcon upper stage crashed into the Moon on August 5th. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured images of the crash site from different viewing angles and with different sunlight angles. The images showed that the crater is about 18 meters wide and about 3 meters deep. SpaceX says the crash was an accident.",
  "key_points": [
    "SpaceX Falcon upper stage crashed into Moon on August 5th",
    "NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured images on August 11th-12th",
    "Korea's Danuri spacecraft confirmed impact location"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}