A SpaceX rocket that veered off course a year ago slammed into the moon Wednesday exactly as scientists predicted, according to data from a South Korean satellite. The Korea Aerospace Research Institute's Danuri spacecraft photographed the crash site shortly after the Falcon 9 upper stage hit the moon at 5,400 mph, carving a dark crater into the lunar surface. The impact was not directly observed, but a telescope in Chile spotted a debris plume, and Danuri took before-and-after images from lunar orbit, which the space agency released Thursday.
The crash site shows a noticeably darker area where the rocket struck, with dust and rock scattered across the moon's surface. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is expected to fly over the site this week to study the aftermath. SpaceX launched Danuri from Cape Canaveral in 2022 as part of a partnership with South Korea, and the same Falcon 9 upper stage that carried lunar landers to the moon in 2024 is now the latest piece of space debris to strike the moon. Solar activity and gravity altered its trajectory, placing it on a collision course.
This is the second known rocket crash on the moon in recent years. A Chinese Long March 5B rocket unintentionally hit the moon in 2022 after a lunar mission, and scientists believe many other rocket stages have struck the moon over decades without being noticed. SpaceX said the Falcon 9 crash highlights the growing challenge of managing space debris as lunar exploration accelerates. The company did not immediately comment on the impact's long-term effects.
Local experts in Brevard County, home to NASA's Kennedy Space Center, noted the incident underscores the risks of increasing commercial and government missions to the moon. 'We're seeing more objects heading to the moon now than ever before,' said Dr. Laura Kim, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida. 'This is just the beginning of a bigger problem.'