South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter gets before and after pictures of Falcon 9 impact on Moon
Click for original image.
By doing a quick adjustment in the orbit of South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter, engineers were able to photograph the dark smear caused by the impact of a Falcon 9 upper stage as it hit the Moon on August 5, 2026.
The before and after pictures are to the right. The impact occurred near 113-mile wide Einstein Crater, located close to the limb of the near side of the Moon. The upper stage ended up on this impact trajectory because it was used in 2025 to launch both Firefly’s Blue Ghost-1 and Ispace’s Resilience lunar landers to the Moon. Its course was designed to miss the Moon after deploying both landers but after about 18 months its path with the Moon intersected.
The Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA) confirmed from this observational data that there were topographical changes near the collision site and traces of ejected material spreading. In the released before-and-after comparison images, a previously unseen elongated black mark appears on the lunar surface after the collision. Danuri had previously captured two baseline images around the predicted impact site on July 9 to facilitate comparison.
In addition, astronomers using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile detected spectroscopic evidence of the impact’s plume, sodium ejected from the surface and lithium from the rocket.
Meanwhile, the insane leftist anti-Musk movement at Wall Street and in the propaganda press decided this not very unusual and quite trivial event [pdf] proved without doubt that SpaceX was a failed company.
- The Independent: The real reason SpaceX shares are tanking after out-of-control rocket smashes into moon
- CNBC: SpaceX moon crash is a perfect metaphor for rocket maker’s share price, analysts say
The absurdity of Wall Street analysts linking this impact with the fall in SpaceX’s stock price is beyond parody.
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Beyond parody, not “parity.”
Fixed. Thank you.
Beyond parody, but AT parity with with the pervasive anti-Musk reporting from “journalists”.
These jerks don’t even deserve the name “Leftist.”
Hitchens was a true man of the Left.
Even Tucker Carlson said that at least folks in Venezuela were social conservatives on some things.
Haley Stevens, of course, is your typical transgender snail-darter lives matter dingbat
With Michigan going Munich, I call Abdul El-Sayed Black September.
Any idea if the size of the impact site matches predictions?
So much for Wall Street “analysts.” SPCX closed sharply up for the week. Maybe SpaceX ought to deliberately crash more 2nd stages into the Moon.
That right there is another reason why Elon HAS to save this Starship at all costs….in that the recovery of this vessel is Artemis II level magic in the way the first landing of a Falcon core wasn’t (with the general populace).
Starship is different