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A SpaceX rocket just crashed into the moon. Now, the race is on to get a look at the impact site
Orbiters are taking a close look at the predicted crash site to learn more.
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Early this morning, a SpaceX rocket slammed into the moon at seven times the speed of sound. Now, lunar orbiters are trying to get a look at the aftermath.
This morning (Aug. 5) at about 2:35 a.m. EDT (0635 GMT), the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket crashed into the moon. To dissect what exactly happened, scientists are looking for imagery of the crash site, with the help of a couple of moon probes.
"NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and NASA’s ShadowCam instrument on the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter will look for opportunities to capture before‑and‑after imagery of the impact site," NASA spokesperson Rob Garner, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, told Space.com. "Image availability depends on several factors, including the impact location, lighting conditions, and when each spacecraft’s orbit next carries it over the area, which may take a few days to receive any imagery."
While you've likely seen the first stages of Falcon 9 rockets gracefully land back on Earth for reuse, the rocket's 9,000-pound (4,000 kilograms) upper stage is disposable. Typically, it's sent to burn up in our atmosphere after its missions are over.
However, that wasn't possible with this rocket, which launched two private lunar landers — Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost and Tokyo-based ispace's Resilience — to a high, moon-crossing Earth orbit in January 2025. The Falcon 9 upper stage used most of its fuel getting to this distant location and couldn't make it back to deorbit in Earth's atmosphere.
So the company performed a different maneuver to take care of this upper stage, Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA science and Dragon programs at SpaceX, said during a press conference on Aug. 3.
"For high-energy missions, we need to perform a different maneuver to ensure the second stage itself is safe per the appropriate rules and regulations, and so we did that here," she said.
But the rocket body was still subject to natural forces, which acted on it over time.