SpaceX Falcon 9 Upper Stage Strikes Moon, Creating Roughly 18-Meter Crater

Overview

• The empty second stage of a Falcon 9 that launched in January 2025 impacted the Moon on Wednesday, August 5, after more than a year drifting in a perturbed orbit toward the near side.
• NASA’s CNEOS and independent trackers confirmed the impact and estimated the collision made a roughly 18-meter-wide, 3.5-meter-deep crater with energy near 2.8 tonnes of TNT.
• South Korea’s Danuri probe released the first before-and-after images showing local topography changes and ejecta, and those data will be shared with NASA as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter prepares higher-resolution follow-up imaging.
• Scientists say this is a rare near-controlled experiment because the object’s size, mass, speed and path were known in advance, allowing teams to test impact models and search the ejecta for signs of subsurface water or rock types.
• The incident renews focus on human-made space debris and disposal rules as agencies note tens of thousands of tracked objects larger than 10 cm orbit Earth and roughly 17,000 tonnes of material have been launched since 1957, a concern for future lunar operations.