{"id":63800,"date":"2026-08-06T15:24:47","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T15:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/?guid=20e3b23b3c9553c2efaafa9f349762de"},"modified":"2026-08-06T16:07:51","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T16:07:51","slug":"spacex-rockets-impact-crater-on-the-moon-spied-by-korean-lunar-orbiter-photos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/2026\/08\/06\/spacex-rockets-impact-crater-on-the-moon-spied-by-korean-lunar-orbiter-photos\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX rocket&#8217;s impact crater on the moon spied by Korean lunar orbiter (photos)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n                            \n                            <article>\n                                <p>The final resting place of SpaceX's moon-smashing rocket has been found.<\/p><p>The Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, known as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/danuri-korea-pathfinder-lunar-orbiter-kplo-moon-mission\"><u>Danuri<\/u><\/a>, has captured imagery of the crater blasted out by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/18962-spacex-falcon-9.html\"><u>Falcon 9<\/u><\/a> upper stage that slammed into the moon early on Wednesday morning (Aug. 5).<\/p><p>\"Danuri began observations about 30 minutes before <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/astronomy\/moon\/a-spacex-rocket-just-crashed-into-the-moon-now-the-race-is-on-to-get-a-look-at-the-impact-site\"><u>the collision<\/u><\/a> and, through orbit control, passed over the impact site multiple times, conducting a total of 8 imaging sessions,\" officials with the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/kari2030\/status\/2085245021469687982\" ><u>said via X<\/u><\/a> this morning (Aug. 6). \"Through this observation, changes in the terrain around the impact site and traces of ejecta spread were confirmed.\"<\/p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/content.jwplatform.com\/players\/UluXuw9r.html\" id=\"UluXuw9r\" title=\"SpaceX rocket will slam into the moon in Aug. 2026\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"auto\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><p>\"Danuri secured both pre-collision and immediate post-collision footage, enabling analysis of changes caused solely by the collision and providing important research data,\" they added in the X post, which shared several before-and-after images of the impact site.<\/p><figure class=\"van-image-figure  inline-layout\" data-bordeaux-image-check ><div class='image-full-width-wrapper'><div class='image-widthsetter' style=\"max-width:2000px;\"><p class=\"vanilla-image-block\" style=\"padding-top:56.25%;\"><img id=\"ZqM2ksXv9umn7FoyzhTFV6\" name=\"falcon 9 moon impact danuri 2\" alt=\"a photograph of a grey mottled surface on which a dark oval area is circled in white\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/ZqM2ksXv9umn7FoyzhTFV6.jpg\" mos=\"\" align=\"middle\" fullscreen=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1125\" attribution=\"\" endorsement=\"\" class=\"inline\"><\/p><\/div><\/div><figcaption itemprop=\"caption description\" class=\" inline-layout\"><span class=\"caption-text\">Before-and-after imagery of the impact site. <\/span><span class=\"credit\" itemprop=\"copyrightHolder\">(Image credit: KARI)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure><p>The Falcon 9 in question launched <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/space-exploration\/launches-spacecraft\/spacex-launches-2-private-lunar-landers-to-the-moon-photos\"><u>on Jan. 15, 2025<\/u><\/a>, sending two private robotic moon landers \u2014 Firefly Aerospace's <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/space-exploration\/private-spaceflight\/we-learned-so-much-that-we-didnt-know-firefly-aerospaces-blue-ghost-moon-lander-mission-was-full-of-surprises\"><u>Blue Ghost<\/u><\/a> and ispace's <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/astronomy\/moon\/crashed-lander-looks-back-at-earth-from-the-moon-space-photo-of-the-day-for-june-10-2025\"><u>Resilience<\/u><\/a> \u2014  to a high, moon-crossing Earth orbit. The duo then made their own way to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/55-earths-moon-formation-composition-and-orbit.html\"><u>the moon<\/u><\/a>; Blue Ghost landed successfully on March 2 of that year, but Resilience crashed during its touchdown attempt.<\/p><p>The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth shortly after liftoff for recovery and reuse, as such boosters <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/space-exploration\/launches-spacecraft\/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-launch-36th-time-new-record\"><u>commonly do<\/u><\/a>. Falcon 9 upper stages, by contrast, are expendable. SpaceX usually disposes of them in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/17683-earth-atmosphere.html\"><u>Earth's atmosphere<\/u><\/a>, but the upper stage on the Blue Ghost-Resilience mission used almost all of its fuel getting its payloads to their distant destination. So the 8,800-pound (4,000 kilograms) rocket body remained up there, orbiting <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/54-earth-history-composition-and-atmosphere.html\"><u>Earth<\/u><\/a> \u2014 until <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/space-weather\"><u>solar activity<\/u><\/a> and gravitational forces pushed it on a collision course for the moon.<\/p><figure class=\"van-image-figure  inline-layout\" data-bordeaux-image-check ><div class='image-full-width-wrapper'><div class='image-widthsetter' style=\"max-width:2000px;\"><p class=\"vanilla-image-block\" style=\"padding-top:56.25%;\"><img id=\"nzqUjqRxb6XuRxWxxh9BU6\" name=\"falcon 9 moon impact danuri 3\" alt=\"a photograph of a grey mottled surface on which a dark oval area is circled in white\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/nzqUjqRxb6XuRxWxxh9BU6.jpg\" mos=\"\" align=\"middle\" fullscreen=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1125\" attribution=\"\" endorsement=\"\" class=\"inline\"><\/p><\/div><\/div><figcaption itemprop=\"caption description\" class=\" inline-layout\"><span class=\"caption-text\">Another before-and-after image, with the \"before\" photo taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter back in 2015. <\/span><span class=\"credit\" itemprop=\"copyrightHolder\">(Image credit: KARI)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure><p>That collision occurred at 2:34 a.m. EDT (0634 GMT) on Wednesday, according to KARI officials \u2014 right in line with predictions. Scientists calculated some other parameters ahead of time as well. For example, the rocket body probably hit the moon at about 5,400 mph (8,690 kph), gouging out a crater up to 89 feet (27 meters) wide.<\/p><p>The new observations by Danuri, as well as future work by other lunar probes, will help verify such predictions.<\/p><p>\"The observation data secured by Danuri will be linked with follow-up observations from NASA's <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/22106-lunar-reconnaissance-orbiter.html\"><u>Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter<\/u><\/a> (LRO) and utilized in international collaborative research,\" KARI officials said in the X post.<\/p><p>It may be that some ground-based telescopes caught the impact as well. Astronomers at the Instituto de Astrof\u00edsica de Andaluc\u00eda in Spain believe they captured a video of <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/jmmadiedo\/status\/2085344665562165293\" ><u>ejected material blasting off of the lunar surface<\/u><\/a> around the predicted time of impact:<\/p><div class=\"see-more see-more--clipped\"><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet hawk-ignore\" data-lang=\"en\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Our team at @iaa_csic has captured the impact on the Moon of the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket. We attach a preliminary video showing the evolution of the ejected material. The black area corresponds to the lunar disk @SpaceX @JuanLuisRizos @elonmusk @tiempobrasero @A3Noticias\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/5Ry7hRdCeS<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/cantworkitout\/status\/2085344665562165293\">August 6, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote><div class=\"see-more__filter\"><\/div><\/div><p>The Falcon 9 upper stage wasn't the first rocket body to slam into the moon. The third stage of a Chinese Long March 3C <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/moon-crash-march-2022-china-rocket-body\"><u>crashed into the lunar surface<\/u><\/a> on March 4, 2022, for example. And the third stage of NASA's <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/saturn-v-rocket-guide-apollo\"><u>Saturn V<\/u><\/a> rocket gouged out craters during multiple <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/apollo-program-overview.html\"><u>Apollo<\/u><\/a> moon missions.<\/p><p>Danuri is South Korea's first lunar probe. The spacecraft launched <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/spacex-launches-south-korea-moon-mission-danuri\"><u>on Aug. 4, 202<\/u>2<\/a> atop a Falcon 9 and began circling the moon four months later. It carries six payloads, five of them provided by Korean universities and research organizations. The sixth is a NASA instrument called ShadowCam, which hunts for signs of water ice <a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/nasa-moon-camera-danuri-korea-pathfinder-lunar-orbiter\"><u>in permanently shadowed regions<\/u><\/a> at the lunar poles.<\/p>\n                                                            <\/article>\n                            \n                        ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Korea&#8217;s Danuri lunar orbiter has spied the crater that a SpaceX rocket blasted out when it slammed into the moon on Wednesday morning (Aug. 5).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":587,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[404,477,2905],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","category-solar-system","category-the-moon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63800"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/587"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63800"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63805,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63800\/revisions\/63805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}