NASA has released detailed images of a crater formed after a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage crashed into the Moon earlier this month.

The impact occurred on August 5, while the new photographs were captured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, between August 11 and 12.

Scientists estimated from the crater’s shadow that the impact feature is about 60 feet wide and less than 10 feet deep.

The Falcon 9 involved in the incident had been launched in January 2025 carrying Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander. The private lunar mission later completed a soft landing on the Moon.

NASA’s photographs were not the first images of the impact location. South Korea’s space agency published images on August 6 that had been captured a day earlier by the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, also known as Danuri.

Capturing detailed follow-up images with NASA’s LRO presented several challenges.

The spacecraft has been orbiting the Moon since 2009 and travels from pole to pole roughly every two hours as the lunar surface rotates beneath it.

To photograph the specific impact location, NASA had to wait six days for the site to move into a suitable position.

The spacecraft also had to be tilted precisely so its camera could point toward the crater while passing about 60 miles above the lunar surface.

Timing was critical. NASA said taking an image just 10 seconds too early or too late could have shifted the target about 10 miles away from the centre of the photograph.

Images captured from different viewing angles revealed both bright and dark streaks extending outward from the crater.

NASA said the darker streaks consist of surface dust and rocks that had been altered over long periods by solar wind, galactic cosmic rays and micrometeorite impacts.

Material forming those streaks was thrown out by the collision from around 1.5 feet beneath the lunar surface.

The brighter material close to the crater rim came from deeper underground and had been freshly exposed by the impact.

Locating and documenting the crater involved cooperation between experts in the United States and South Korea as well as other observers.

NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies progressively refined the rocket stage’s trajectory and identified the expected impact location before sharing the information with the Korean team.

After Danuri photographed the site, its team provided updated coordinates to NASA, helping the LRO team refine its own imaging attempt.

The observations provide scientists with an opportunity to examine how a known artificial object created a fresh impact feature on the lunar surface and how material from different depths was distributed around the resulting crater.