Pic of the Week: SpaceX Rocket Part Creates Crater on Moon

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The two images show the lunar surface before and after the impact of the Falcon 9 upper stage on August 5, 2026. (NASA Goddard/Intuitive Machines)

Earlier this week, NASA released the image above showing the crater created by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket’s upper stage. The upper stage was part of an earlier SpaceX mission from January 2025 that launched the Firefly Blue Ghost 1 mission. This lunar image was captured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter between August 11 and 12.

NASA explained the complex process needed to locate the new crater:

Finding the impact site took global coordination among experts and hobbyists. Independent astronomers first identified the rocket’s trajectory using publicly available data. NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, which tracks natural objects that could pose hazards to Earth for the agency’s Planetary Defense program, used this opportunity to test and validate tools and techniques for predicting impacts.

Based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the center incrementally refined the trajectory until identifying the location of impact, which it provided to the Republic of Korea for their Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (Danuri) team. The team used the high-resolution LUTI camera on Danuri a few hours later to image the crater, finding the prediction was accurate to about 0.6 miles.

After capturing images of the crater, the Danuri mission sent coordinates to NASA’s LRO team to help refine their follow-up imaging sequence. Comparing their new crater images with the pre-impact images, the LRO team updated the crater center coordinates: 19.4759°N, 266.7138°E, 511 meters elevation.

Space Quote: Swift Will Be a Shooting Star Later This Year

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Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of An artist’s concept of the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in orbit with the spacecraft’s part labeled. (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab)

“This is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting. The team moved with extraordinary speed to give Swift a chance to carry out more science while advancing capabilities America will need for satellite servicing in the future. We are going to learn everything we can from LINK’s rendezvous attempt and put those lessons to work on the missions that follow.”

–Statement by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman after the failure of the $30 million LINK spacecraft mission to boost NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to a higher altitude to extend its life. The $500 million observatory was launched in 2004 to capture incoming gamma-ray bursts from the universe. The observatory is expected to burn up in the atmosphere later this year.

Podcast: Jupiters Around Other Suns

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NASA’s Curious Universe podcast has a special series on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Titled “Roman Series: Jupiters Around Other Suns,” it is the second episode in the podcast’s 13th season. The first episode in this series is titled “Roman Series: NASA’s New View of the Dark Universe.”

This second episode discusses the Roman Space Telescope’s upcoming search for exoplanets, noting that space telescope is expected to discover as many as 100,000 new exoplanets within 26,000 light years from Earth. More importantly, it should be able to detect Earth-like exoplanets that have been very difficult to detect up to this point.

In the episode, Vanessa Bailey, a scientist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, states:

I’m quite excited, because the Nancy Grace Roman mission, one of the two cameras on board the Wide Field instrument, will use the microlensing method to get the most complete census to date of smaller planets orbiting at distances more like Earth, Mars, Jupiter, a real part of parameter space we’ve never been able to access before, and that’s what’s going to tell us, is our solar system common or rare, at least go a long way to answering that question.

The Roman Space Telescope will also analyze the light smudges represented by an exoplanet so it can learn more about the nature of that world. These smudges represent reflected light from the host sun, but it help us to identify the contents of the exoplanet’s atmosphere. And getting that smudge is a lot of work, which is described in detail in the podcast.

The podcast also discusses the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), a future mission to discover even more about the atmospheres of exoplanets.

The efforts of the Roman Space Telescope should help to pave the way for the HWO and more amazing missions after that.

Space Stories: Martian Spiders, Space Constipation, and an Exploding Chinese Rocket

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Image (Credit): Spider-like shapes on the surface of Mars. (ESA/TGO/CaSSIS)

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—ZME Science: “NASA Finally Figured Out What’s Up With Those “Mars Spiders”“

For years, satellites around Mars kept finding mysterious, spider-like geological structures. Mars spiders, scientifically known as araneiform terrain, are unique geological formations predominantly found in the southern hemisphere of Mars. They appear as branching, spider-like channels etched into the Martian surface, sometimes spanning over a kilometer in length. In 2024, NASA-led lab experiments pinned down the likeliest way these “spiders” form: seasonal CO₂ ice. Now, a 2026 follow-up showed that the soil beneath the ice can make or break the process, and that these structures could hold clues to Mars’ wet past.

—Earth.com News: “Why Do Astronauts Get Constipated in Space? Scientists Have a New Clue“

Astronauts have complained about constipation for as long as people have flown to space. Nobody could say exactly why. Researchers have long suspected that living without gravity changes how quickly food moves through the gut. Blood drawn from crew members on long stays aboard the International Space Station now points to an answer. Giorgia La Barbera, a joint first author of the study and an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, led the work with NASA. “We see changes in astronauts’ blood samples that indicate that the gut bacteria begin to ferment protein to a greater extent than usual within weeks after the astronauts arrive in space, and this change continues until they are back on Earth,” La Barbera said.

—CNN: “Chinese Rocket Carrying Satellite Explodes Seconds After Launch“

A Chinese rocket set to launch a satellite into orbit blew-up seconds after liftoff Monday, marking the relatively rare failure for a rocket considered a workhorse of Beijing’s space program. The Long March 7A rocket erupted into a massive fireball just 85 seconds after blasting off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on the island of Hainan on Monday night, video showed. Unlike other successful launches, the incident appears to have been downplayed on China’s state media with scant mention of the explosion.

Note: Here is the podcast version of this post.