South Korea space agency shares Moon images after SpaceX rocket debris crash
Seoul's lunar orbiter captured images of the Moon before and after part of SpaceX's rocket hit its surface on Wednesday.
South Korea's space agency has released images of the Moon following the impact of a SpaceX rocket part on its surface last Wednesday.
The Korean AeroSpace Administration (KASA) announced that its lunar orbiter, Danuri, captured photographs after the collision, which it then shared alongside pre-impact images of the lunar surface.
According to the South Korean space agency, the rocket debris struck the Moon at approximately 06:35 GMT on Wednesday. SpaceX has stated that the impact was unintentional.
SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 rockets are designed with an upper stage intended to return to Earth, while other sections are shed in space. This type of rocket has been utilized by SpaceX for multiple missions.
The empty upper stage of this particular Falcon 9 rocket, which scientists predicted would hit the Moon at roughly 5,400 mph (8,700 km/h), is comparable in size to a five-story building and has an approximate Earth weight of 4,000 kg (630 st).
The brief, intense flash generated by the rocket part's collision with the Moon would have been challenging for amateur astronomers to observe, even with high-end telescopes. However, larger observatories, including Seoul's space agency, are currently analyzing the data.
While the impact posed no threat to Earth, Matt Bothwell, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge, expressed concerns regarding space debris. He noted that "Space is getting more and more crowded" as "we launch more stuff into space" each year. Bothwell cautioned that "It could feasibly be within a few decades that it's actually quite hard to get past Earth's orbit because space is so crowded."
This Falcon 9 had been in orbit since January of last year, having launched from Florida. The same booster section from the January 2025 mission is scheduled for its 18th flight on August 10, with SpaceX aiming to deploy 29 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit.
The rocket that launched from Florida last January was carrying two lunar landers into space. Its purpose was to propel the upper stage with sufficient force to send both landers out of Earth's orbit and onto a trajectory toward the Moon.
The spent stage was left in a long, looping orbit that extended toward the Moon and then returned. Over the subsequent 18 months, the subtle gravitational pull of the Earth, Moon, and Sun, along with sunlight, provided it with a faint push.
Astronomers tracking the rocket part eventually determined that these minor nudges had set it on a course toward the Moon, and it was gaining speed daily.
The impact on Wednesday occurred during daylight hours for many parts of the world, but the minuscule flash it produced would have been far too faint to be seen, even through a telescope.
[The original text included two questions at the end: "What can scientists learn from a stray SpaceX rocket hitting the Moon?" and "What will happen when a SpaceX rocket collides with the Moon?" These are not facts to be rewritten but rather prompts for further discussion, so they are omitted from the factual rewrite.]