SpaceX rocket debris struck the Moon on Wednesday, and South Korea’s space agency has now released images showing the impact on the lunar surface. The Korean AeroSpace Administration, known as KASA, said its lunar orbiter Danuri captured the Moon both before and after the collision and shared the pictures for comparison.
According to KASA, the impact occurred at about 06:35 GMT. The object was the empty upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, a reusable SpaceX booster component that scientists had predicted would slam into the Moon at roughly 5,400 mph, or 8,700 km/h. The stage is about the size of a five-storey building and weighs around 4,000 kg on Earth. KASA said the flash from the collision would have been difficult to catch even with powerful amateur telescopes, though larger observatories are now studying the data.
The rocket part had been in orbit since January last year, when it lifted off from Florida carrying two lunar landers. Its job was to push that upper stage hard enough to send the landers beyond Earth’s orbit and toward the Moon. After that, the spent stage remained in a long, looping path that swung between Earth and the Moon. Over the following 18 months, the combined pull of the Earth, Moon and Sun, along with sunlight, slowly altered its course until astronomers determined it was headed for the Moon and speeding up each day.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 system is built so that part of the rocket can return to Earth while other sections are discarded in space, and the company has used it on several missions. The same booster section from the January 2025 mission is scheduled for its 18th flight on 10 August, when SpaceX says it plans to launch 29 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit.
