CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – In a groundbreaking feat, NASA’s lunar orbiting spacecraft is sending back the clearest images yet of a crater sculpted by a SpaceX rocket’s collision.
Tuesday saw the release of NASA’s before-and-after images spotlighting the site of this cosmic crash.
This incident involved the Falcon rocket’s upper stage, which slammed into the lunar surface at an astonishing speed of 5,400 mph (8,700 kph) on August 5. After a yearlong drift in the vacuum of space, it brought with it a couple of private moon landers equipped with experiments, alongside a miniature rover, as part of NASA’s initiative to encourage commercial ventures in lunar discovery.
Recent images captured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal that the newly formed crater spans 60 feet (18 meters) wide and plunges less than 10 feet (3 meters) deep, as per initial scientific assessments.
Visually striking dark and bright streaks fan out from the crater, with the darker streaks signifying ancient material near the surface, shaped over time by cosmic forces such as solar winds and meteor impacts. The brighter trails capture freshly upturned rocks and soil, flung up from deeper subsurface layers.
The spacecraft photographed the crater a week after the collision from 60 miles (96 kilometers) up, while zooming along at one mile per second. Flight controllers had to tilt the spacecraft so its cameras pointed toward the impact scene.
The orbiter completes a lunar polar orbit every two hours, as the moon rotates beneath. It took six days before the crash scene came into view.
South Korea’s Danuri spacecraft was first on the scene to beam back photos.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been orbiting the moon since 2009, serving as NASA’s up-close eyes as the space agency works to return astronauts to the lunar surface.
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