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![\"Crater](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/intro-1787140739.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThey were taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.<\/p>\n
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NASA Goddard\/Intuitive Machines<\/p>\n
In the early hours of August 5, the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket crashed<\/a> into the lunar surface. Now, NASA has released<\/a> a series of images captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) from August 11 to 12, showing a new crater on the moon caused by the wandering rocket.\u00a0<\/p>\n To capture the images, NASA engineers had to tilt the spacecraft sideways so its cameras would point downward as it passed 60 miles above the crater. Specifically, they used LRO’s\u00a0Narrow-Angle Camera, which can see features on the lunar surface as small as three feet wide.\u00a0<\/p>\n It wasn’t an easy feat, as the spacecraft flew from\u00a0pole to pole every two hours at a speed of\u00a01 mile per second, while the Moon rotated on its axis underneath. NASA had to wait for the LRO and the crash site to align, and that took six days. The agency did, however, release before-and-after photos, which you can see on the official site<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the photos above show the crash site from different angles. The darker streak radiating out of the crater is made of older materials from near the surface: Dust and rocks whose colors and components have already been altered by years of exposure to solar winds and cosmic rays. The lighter materials near the rim came from deeper underground.<\/p>\n