When it was announced that the spent Falcon 9 second stage from the January 15, 2025, Falcon 9 launch that carried Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 and ispace’s Hakuto-R Mission 2 (Resilience) lunar landers was going to impact the Moon, in one of the libration zones — the part of the lunar surface that is only sometimes visible from Earth — it led to a lot of excitement. On one hand, a lot of space and astronomy enthusiasts who were excited to see if it would be visible; on the other hand, a bunch of others who were offended, and even frightened.
Those people seemed to fall into three camps: people who were offended that Elon was disturbing the pristine surface of the Moon, which ought to be a national park or something; "Native American" cosplayers who said the Moon was a Goddess and shouldn't be violated; and people who were sure that this great big rocket hitting the Moon would lead to devastation, making future Moon colonies uninhabitable and possibly result in rains of meteors creating havoc on the Earth.
On August 5th, 2026, the Falcon upper stage impacted the Moon at roughly 19.5° N, 266.7° E. Spoiler alert: The moon didn't blow up. Honestly, the Moon hardly noticed.
The impact made a crater about 18 meters across and three meters deep. (Okay, if you insist, about 60 feet across and 10 feet deep — about half the size of an Olympic swimming pool.) And if the Moon Goddess had any complaints, She didn't register them with NASA or SpaceX.
But the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter got some nifty pictures. The showiest one is undoubtedly NASA LRO's before-and-after picture.
Spotted: Falcon 9 impact site
— NASA Solar System (@NASASolarSystem) August 18, 2026
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has captured images of a new crater on the Moon. The crater formed on Aug. 5, 2026, when a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage impacted the lunar surface. https://t.co/aqduBYwpmg pic.twitter.com/hE83yvzmIk
They also published some images with different lighting. I think the coolest ones show how the material was scattered toward the bottom right — I bet the impactor came in from the top left.
Now, to be honest, I think this was another exhibit of Elon Derangement — you know, that leads to people keying Teslas, blowing up Cybertrucks, and setting fire to Tesla dealerships. Ever since Musk supported President Donald Trump and helped establish DOGE, the left has elevated Elon to be the second most evil man in history, right behind Trump and ahead of Hitler, who did at least hate Jews.
The Falcon 9 second stage only weighed about 4,000 kilograms, 4 metric tonnes (say, 8,700 pounds), and it was hardly the first thing that humans made hit the Moon. Among them were:
Saturn IV-B (Saturn 5 third stages) for Apollos 13,14,15,16, and 17, each around 14 metric tonnes or more than four times as big.
Multiple Lunar Module ascent stages at about 2 metric tonnes
Ranger 6-9 (1964/1965) at about 350 kg each. (I remember seeing the pictures on TV and in Look and Life magazines.)
All in all, it seems to have been a big disappointment. Elon didn't blow up the Moon.
(Don't forget, Sky Candy comes out every Friday, and the Sunday Supplement for more science content on, you guessed it, Sunday.)
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