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: India Invited to the Moon

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“The 9th meeting of the India-U.S. Civil Space Joint Working Group (CSJWG) was hosted by India on 5-6 August 2026 at the headquarters of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Bengaluru…NASA invited ISRO to join its Moon Base program, building on the two countries’ partnership under the Artemis Accords.  The two sides also agreed to advance discussions for cooperation on open scientific data sharing under the Accords.“

-Statement issued by the US Embassy in India on August 11, 2026 pertaining to NASA’s ongoing Moon Base program. India was the fourth nation to successfully land on the Moon back in 2023 with its Chandrayaan-3 mission. With that landing, it was also the first country to successfully land at the Moon’s South Pole.

NASA Helps with Mining the Moon

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Image (Credit): A false-color composite picture of the Moon taken through three color filters on NASA’s Galileo solid-state imaging system. (NASA)

While everyone was staring up at the dark Moon covering the bright sun during today’s eclipse, NASA was busy chatting about new ways to view the Moon. The image above is one of many that can be created using NASA data to assist commercial companies trying to understand the lunar terrain while looking for useful minerals.

The accompanying NASA story includes comments from multiple commercial companies eyeing the Moon’s resources.

Blair DeWitt, CEO of Lunar Station, stated:

We can find sites for landing pads, for cultivating the best paths for roving, and inform our clients about communications. If you can’t see Earth at a given location like in the polar regions or the far side of the Moon, you have to come up with a relay strategy…We can do this in part thanks to NASA data.

We can assume the Chinese are doing the same for their own commercial sector, though NASA has more data going back decades. Even so, China already has rocks from the far side of the Moon, which is a feat that not even NASA achieved. And not to be outdone, just last week China released its own comprehensive geological map of the Moon.

As with everything else pertaining to the Moon, the race is on.

Video: NASA’s Progress with Phase 1 of the Moon Base

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): An artist’s rending of NASA efforts to create a permanent Moon Base. (NASA)

NASA is quickly learning that it needs to get out front with its own PR to promote efforts to build a Moon base near the lunar South Pole. With budget cuts always looming in the background, public support will be essential to ensure the US has a long-term presence on the Moon.

This latest video from NASA does a good job explaining the status of the various vendors creating landers and rovers for phase 1 of the Moon base, which extends to 2029. This phase will be limited to robotics preparing the lunar surface for later astronauts. The video covers the efforts of Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, Voyager Lunar Systems, and Northrop Grumman.

The video is a helpful way to keep the public informed, but the best publicity will be success. The lunar landings to date by commercial partners have been mostly disappointing. The success of these upcoming missions is what will convince the public that we can really settle on the Moon.