See the first images of SpaceX rocket that collided with the Moon

Non August 5th we learned that a Falcon 9 rocket abandoned by SpaceX he bumped into the moon and even though NASA confirmed the collision a few hours after it happened, none of the satellites in orbit were able to capture the moment.

Now, the U.S. space agency has shared some images of the crater resulting from the crash of this rocket. The images you can see below were captured by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) between August 11 and 12, displaying a new crater on the surface of the Moon.

NASA explains that in order to capture these images, it had to reorient the LRO as this satellite passed about 100 km from the lunar surface. According to information gathered by the space agency, the crater is about 18 meters in diameter and 3 meters deep.

Remember that this SpaceX rocket was about 12 meters long and 4 meters wide, weighing around 4 tons. The rocket is estimated to have collided with the Moon at a speed of 8,690 km/h.

© NASA  

What did NASA say

This upper part of the rocket resulted from a launch carried out in 2025 that allowed the orbit of NASA's Blue Ghost One landing module, Firefly Aerospace, as part of the CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative, a commercial service program to transport scientific and technological cargo to the lunar surface.

According to NASA in a video published on social network X, the collision occurred due to a combination of solar activity and gravitational forces that altered the trajectory of the object.

“NASA did not deliberately plan this upper part to collide with the Moon,” explained an agency spokesperson in the video, which indicated that this type of equipment elimination is an accepted practice in lunar operations.

“ In reality, this is a technically accepted and safe method for disposal of equipment in low lunar orbit,” he said.

The agency added that some operators choose to end their operations by making the equipment impact on the lunar surface, because “it is a predictable and verifiable strategy to eliminate equipment at the end of its useful life.”.

The impact did not pose any danger to Earth or any equipment on the Moon, NASA stressed.

“ Scientists are eager to study this impact event because it can help us better understand how to track things of this kind in the future,” he said.

NASA explained that the Moon functions as a “natural laboratory to study processes that occur throughout the solar system,” due to the absence of atmosphere and its surface to remain stable for long periods.

The study of this type of impact allows scientists to analyze crater formation, a phenomenon that occurs in different bodies of the solar system.

“By touching a known sized object at a known speed against the lunar surface, this can help scientists understand the process of crater formation by impact and what kind of crater results from such an impact,” he added.

The agency recalled that the Moon has received constant impacts during its nearly 4,000 million years of history.

“Meteorites, asteroids, comets and other objects collide with the Moon at all times,” he said.

In addition, NASA highlighted that the astronauts of the Artemis II mission observed this year, during a few-hour lunar overflight, several impact phenomena, including flashes of active impacts or craters forming on the surface.