A South Korean satellite recently captured images of a distinctive mark left on the moon following a collision with a SpaceX rocket. The mark appears as a smudge, varying in darkness across different photos, and is located near the Einstein Crater on the moon’s surface. The Korean lunar orbiter Danuri, also known as the Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), documented the incident with before and after images of the SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage crashing into the lunar surface as it was en route to the moon, as reported by the Korean AeroSpace Administration (KASA) on X.
These images were taken using the orbiter’s high-resolution Lunar Terrain Imager (LUTI) camera. The SpaceX rocket’s second stage, launched in January 2025, had been off-course for a year after deploying two lunar landers into space. The rocket’s unintentional but expected crash onto the moon occurred on Wednesday at a speed of approximately 8,700 km/hour.
Telescopes on Earth detected the plume of debris resulting from the crash, confirming the impact even prior to the release of the new images. Danuri itself was launched aboard a SpaceX rocket in 2022 and has been orbiting approximately 100 kilometers above the moon’s poles since December of that year. Initially planned for a one-year mission, its operational life has been extended until 2027.
