NASA Finds the Crater a SpaceX Rocket Left on the Moon

Anna and Avery cover how NASA, working with South Korea's Danuri orbiter, pinpointed and imaged the exact crater left by a SpaceX Falcon 9 stage that struck the Moon on August 5th. Plus: the private rescue mission for NASA's ailing Swift telescope has officially failed, astronomers may have caught dark matter bending a black hole's jet, and Rocket Lab launches its ninth radar satellite for Japan's iQPS. Full show notes: Today's episode — S05E173, Friday August 21, 2026: Main story: NASA finds the crater a SpaceX rocket left on the Moon. A spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage struck the Moon's surface on August 5, 2026, at 19.4759°N, 266.7138°E. South Korea's Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (Danuri) imaged the impact site within hours using its LUTI camera, confirming the predicted location to within 0.6 miles and passing refined coordinates to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team. LRO's Narrow-Angle Camera imaged the site on August 11–12, revealing a crater roughly 60 feet wide and less than 10 feet deep, with dark rays of space-weathered material excavated from about 1.5 feet down and brighter rays of fresh, unweathered material from deeper still. NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (Planetary Defense program) refined the original impact prediction using data from independent astronomers. Swift telescope rescue mission fails. NASA's Swift Observatory, losing altitude faster than expected due to heightened solar activity, was the target of a $30 million rescue attempt by Arizona-based Katalyst Space Technologies. Their LINK spacecraft launched July 3 on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket but suffered an attitude-control failure roughly three weeks later, spinning uncontrollably before it could dock with and boost Swift. NASA confirmed the mission's failure on August 19; Swift is now expected to reenter the atmosphere uncontrolled before the end of 2026. LINK will still attempt a proximity flyby to gather data for future servicing missions. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman: "This is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting." Dark matter may be magnifying a black hole's jet. A team led by Silke Britzen at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, combining data from the VLBA, the Fermi gamma-ray telescope, and NASA's Swift X-ray instrument, found that the plasma jet from blazar PKS 2233-148 shows an unexpected deviation consistent with gravitational lensing by an unseen dark matter clump — a potential first detection of dark matter substructure lensing a blazar jet. The result could also help confirm blazars as sources of high-energy cosmic neutrinos. Published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, July 31. Rocket Lab launches a new radar satellite for Japan. Rocket Lab launched SUSANOO-II, a synthetic aperture radar Earth-observation satellite, for Tokyo-based iQPS on an Electron rocket from New Zealand (mission: "The Lightning God Defends"). It's Rocket Lab's ninth launch for iQPS, part of a planned 36-satellite constellation, and marks the company's 14th flight of 2026 and 93rd Electron mission overall. Tonight's sky: the Moon is a waxing gibbous, about 63% illuminated. With a telescope, find the Ring Nebula (M57) in Lyra — look for bright star Vega overhead, then the small parallelogram of stars just below it. Mark your calendars for a 96%-partial lunar eclipse on August 27–28, nearly total — full viewing details to come. Links & sources: - NASA Science — NASA's LRO Images Falcon 9 Crater on Moon, Learns New Details (https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/moon/nasas-lro-images-falcon-9-crater-on-moon-learns-new-details/) - Universe Today — NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Images Falcon 9 Crater on Moon, With Some Help From a Korean Spacecraft (https://www.universetoday.com/articles/nasas-lunar-reconnaissance-orbiter-images-falcon-9-crater-on-moon-with-some-help-from-a-korean-space) - Space.com — Private mission to save NASA's Swift space telescope fails (https://www.space.com/space-exploration/missions/private-mission-to-save-nasas-swift-space-telescope-fails) - Live Science — 'This is not the outcome we were working towards': $30 million mission to save NASA's Swift telescope fails (https://www.livescience.com/space/space-exploration/this-is-not-the-outcome-we-were-working-towards-usd30-million-mission-to-save-nasas-swift-telescope-fails) - Space.com — Dark matter could magnify the jets of a ravenously feeding supermassive black hole (https://www.space.com/astronomy/black-holes/dark-matter-could-magnify-the-jets-of-a-ravenously-feeding-supermassive-black-hole) - Space.com — Rocket Lab launches private Japanese Earth-observing satellite to orbit (https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/rocket-lab-launch-private-japanese-earth-observing-sar-satellite-lightning-god-defends) - Space.com — Night sky August 2026: what you can see tonight (https://www.space.com/what-to-see-night-sky-august-2026)...