Talk about a moonshot... literally. NASA has new proof of the moon's run-in with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket earlier this month.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured images of a brand new moon crater caused when the Falcon 9's upper stage slammed into the lunar surface on August 5.

The rocket stage had been orbiting earth since January 2025, leftover from Firefly Blue Ghost 1 mission.

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What we know about the crater

Scientists found the crater is about 60 feet wide and less than 10 feet deep.

Images reveal bright and dark rays stretching outward from the point of impact, the darker material being older lunar dust and rock, while the brighter spots are fresh material excavated by the crash.

The new lunar scar sits near the pre-existing Einstein Crater, on the western side of the moon.

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Finding the crater was no easy feat

According to NASA, the LRO had to tilt its cameras toward the target while flying about 1 mile per second.

If the camera snapped just 10 seconds too early or too late, the target would have shifted about 10 miles out of frame.

It took six days for the spacecraft to get the perfect shot.

Independent astronomers first tracked the rocket using publicly available data.

NASA scientists refined the trajectory, then shared their prediction with South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter.

Hours later, Danuri photographed the spot and nailed the predicted impact location to within about 0.6 miles.

That image then helped NASA and LRO zero in even more precisely.

With this new evidence, our map of space (and humankind's impact on the moon) just got a little more detailed.