Between August 11 and 12, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) successfully imaged a newly formed crater on the lunar surface. The impact occurred on August 5, when a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage struck the Moon following its January 2025 deployment of the Firefly Blue Ghost 1 mission.
To capture the impact site, engineers performed precise spacecraft maneuvers, tilting the LRO so its cameras would face the crater during each pass at an altitude of approximately 60 miles. Traveling at a velocity of one mile per second, the orbiter maintains a polar orbit, circling the Moon every two hours. Because the Moon rotates beneath the spacecraft, engineers had to wait six days for the specific impact site to rotate into the LRO’s field of view.
Precision was critical; even a minor timing error of 10 seconds would have caused the target to drift 10 miles off-center in the frame.
The diverse viewing angles provided by the orbiter allowed scientists to study the crater under various lighting conditions, revealing intricate topographical details. By analyzing the prominent crater rim, researchers measured a width of 60 feet, while shadow analysis indicated a depth of less than 10 feet.
These high-resolution details were made possible by the LRO’s Narrow-Angle Camera, which is capable of detecting features as small as 3 feet wide.
The resulting imagery reveals bright and dark rays emanating from the impact site. The darker streaks consist of surface dust and regolith that has been weathered over time by solar winds, galactic cosmic rays, and micrometeorite impacts. This aged material was unearthed from a depth of 1.5 feet during the collision. Conversely, the brighter streaks near the rim consist of fresh material excavated from deeper within the lunar subsurface.
Locating the impact site was a collaborative effort involving global experts and amateur astronomers. While independent observers initially tracked the rocket’s trajectory using public data, NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) utilized the event to refine its predictive tools and techniques for planetary defense.
Operating out of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, CNEOS experts iteratively refined the trajectory until the impact location was pinpointed. This data was shared with the Republic of Korea’s Danuri (Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter) team, who used their high-resolution LUTI camera to image the crater just hours later, confirming the prediction was accurate within 0.6 miles.
Following its successful observation, the Danuri mission provided coordinates to NASA’s LRO team to optimize their follow-up imaging sequence. By comparing the new imagery with pre-impact records, the LRO team established the finalized crater coordinates at 19.4759°N, 266.7138°E, with an elevation of 511 meters.