China's satellites did not capture the image of Musk's rocket impacting a lunar crater; the imagery comes from South Korea's Lunar Orbiter "Danuri."

According to Guangming Online, at 14:35 Beijing Time on August 5, 2026, the spent second stage of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket—weighing approximately 4 tons—uncontrolledly impacted near the western edge of the Einstein Crater on the Moon, creating a new artificial impact crater estimated to be 20–30 meters in diameter.

The South Korean lunar probe, also known as Danuri, captured images of the impact crater formed by the Falcon 9 upper stage striking the Moon early Wednesday morning. Figure 1

"Danuri began observing the event about 30 minutes before the collision and conducted eight imaging observations through multiple orbital passes over the impact site via trajectory control," KARI officials stated on the X platform on August 6.

China's Queqiao-2 mission is primarily tasked with communication relay for the far side of the Moon, not high-resolution surface imaging, and has never released photos of this impact crater.

A video allegedly taken by China's Gande-1 No. 01 satellite launched on July 24 has circulated online, but there is no official confirmation.

To date, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has not released any actual photographs of the Falcon 9 impact crater.

NASA has already adjusted LRO’s orbital plan and will conduct subsequent flybys near the impact site around the Einstein Crater.

But China was not entirely inactive.

Several domestic astronomical institutions and the Gande-1 No. 01 satellite successfully completed orbital calculations, accurately predicting both the time and location of the impact, though they have not publicly released actual images of the impact crater.

This is not the first time a rocket debris has collided with the Moon.

At 20:25 Beijing Time on March 4, 2022, an object weighing roughly 3 tons impacted the far side of the Moon near the Hertzsprung Crater. Later, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured unique twin impact craters, each approximately 16 meters and 18 meters in diameter, partially overlapping, with a total span close to 29 meters. Figure 2

Western astronomers initially suspected it was the upper stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Subsequent foreign orbital and spectral analyses suggested the object was instead the third stage (upper stage) of China’s Long March 3C rocket used in the Chang’e 5-T1 mission in 2014.

However, the Foreign Ministry has clearly stated: the final stage of the Chang’e 5-T1 mission had already re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and burned up—it was not the object responsible for this lunar impact.

Therefore, whose rocket caused the previous lunar impact remains an unsolved mystery.

Original article: toutiao.com/article/1873004305268740/

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.