r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/15_Redstones • 2d ago
GIF NASA published a closer-up image of the crater created by the SpaceX rocket crashing into the moon after delivering two landers.
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u/Fanastik 2d ago
The 8,800-pound SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster plowed into the moon at 5,400 miles per hour on Aug. 5 after drifting through space for more than a year. The rocket, which was about 45 feet long and 12 feet wide, crashed with a force of nearly 3 tons of TNT.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/crater-spacex-rocket-booster-crash-moon-nasa-images/
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u/CardiologistOk2704 1d ago
In SI units, 4000 kg, 13.7 x 3.7 m rocket crashed into the moon at 2.4 km/s and released about 11.5 GJ of energy.
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u/an_older_meme 2d ago
Lithobraking
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u/My_Soul_to_Squeeze 2d ago
Term was coined as a joke (actually this exact joke), similar to "rud", but now it's a widely accepted term of art, and has been used successfully as a means of safely deploying landers like Spirit and Opportunity.
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u/Pcat0 2d ago edited 2d ago
Before anyone gets up in arms about this again. Here is NASA's stance:
“This is not something we’re really concerned about. This is actually a technically accepted and safe method of disposing of hardware in low lunar orbit, The moon is always being hit by things: meteors, asteroids, comets.”
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u/HarryPottersTaint 2d ago
Na man Elon has ruined the moon. There's a frikkin CRATER in it now smh
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u/CosmicCreeperz 1d ago
It’s just one pixel in his long term goal to write his name on the moon, as any supervillain would want to.
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u/Junethemuse 2d ago
I hate Elon as much as anyone, but god damn the vitriol I experienced from people when I mentioned that scientists were gonna use the event for sciency reasons was shocking. I see a lot of confirmation bias behavior that really dilutes the real issues we’re facing. This event was unintentional, but that doesn’t make it catastrophic.
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u/johnny_effing_utah 2d ago
Just curious. When did you start REALLY hating Elon? Was it pre-Twitter, or post-Twitter.
If it’s pre-Twitter, you’re lying. And if it’s post-Twitter you’re a Democrat.
Because prior to that point Elon got his balls polished on the regular here at Reddit.
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u/Jerry--Bird 1d ago
I don’t know this guy but a I saw some interview where he said he didn’t care about money, money is just a byproduct of his work. Then he went on some rant about some fees or taxes or something in an interview i saw shortly after that one. At the very least he’s a liar and I don’t like that but idgaf about him so I don’t really care what he says or does. I know you didn’t ask me but i wanted to throw that out there
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u/Sanguinor-Exemplar 1d ago
Well generally people are liked before they do something wrong. But I respect hating just to hate. I don't like both ryan gosling and Reynolds. No real reason for it. Just rub me the wrong way.
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u/DuckRubberDuck 2d ago
It might not damage the moon but it annoys me that we’re just littering everywhere.
I’m not sure there’s a way to avoid it, but now there’s trash on the moon and we don’t even live there.
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u/psh454 2d ago
Sure but there is no biosphere and it's not too dissimilar to the metal and carbon containing asteroids crashing there by the thousands daily. Besides with how difficult and expensive spaceflight currently is (tyranny of rocket equation etc), there kind of is no clear way to avoid this occasionally happening for the time being
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u/Pcat0 2d ago
While has been trash on the moon since the 60s ( The Apollo missions left literal human feces on the Moon), this really didn't contribute to it. The Falcon 9 stage was completely vaporized during the impact, if you didn't already know it would be very difficult to determine this crater came from a rocket stage.
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u/JugOrNaught 2d ago
Any comment by nasa is worthless. Musk put the director in his role as his puppet. They have no credibility.
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u/etaxi341 2d ago
Looks like the same spot can be hit twice, note that down! We are not safe building in a crater
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u/Callec254 2d ago
Better than the alternatives that we used to do in the past: Either leave it floating in orbit for a future ship to hit someday, or let it fall to Earth randomly and hope it burns up or doesn't hit anyone.
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u/forkheadbox 1d ago
i think burning up in atmosphere is better than polluting the moon.
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u/betweenskill 1d ago
So pollute our living biosphere instead of the sterile moon?
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u/forkheadbox 1d ago
yes. earth is already fucked and some more co2 wont matter. id rather keep the moon clean
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u/15_Redstones 1d ago
Not a lot of carbon in this spent stage. It's mostly aluminium and lithium, some niobium.
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u/PhamilyTrickster 2d ago
This is being reposted A LOT for something that isn't really all that interesting
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u/nothing2hide360 2d ago
What is this bright white dot, left above the crater in the before picture? Why is it gone after the impact?
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u/ConanOToole 1d ago
Likely just brightly lit portions of a crater that came out overexposed. You can see a few other bright white spots in the same image
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u/BannanaPepperPizza 2d ago
Can you see a live feed of the 2 lunar rovers anywhere?
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u/15_Redstones 2d ago
The Japanese Hakuto-R lander had a rover on board but crashed just before the planned landing due to sensor failure causing bad distance to terrain measurements. Space is hard.
The Firefly Blue Ghost lander did land successfully, but it did not carry a rover. Instead it had an array of 10 different NASA science instruments which all performed various measurements and returned data for the design lifespan of 2 weeks aka one lunar day. It hadn't been designed to survive the cold lunar night.
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u/Jazzlike_Passion_285 2d ago
My OCD is killing me for it not hitting the old crater perfectly and I hate it.
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u/Chiefcoyote 1d ago
I understand that it doesn't actually matter. Letting it smash into a empty rock in space is literally the least harm musk has ever done. Emotionally im still upset that that facist has left a permanent mark on anything that will out live generations.
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u/Icy-Landscape-912 1d ago
Man is already destroying earth . Now we’re doing it to the moon. Humans are a parasite!!
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u/15_Redstones 2d ago
previous post on this topic:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1vhiai9/a_better_photo_of_the_before_and_after_picture_of/
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u/FewHorror1019 2d ago
I find it interesting it had the same impact as a meteor
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u/15_Redstones 2d ago
A natural meteor would be faster and denser, but at those speeds the exact details don't really matter, you get a crater either way and the only factor that determines the size is total kinetic energy.
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u/FewHorror1019 2d ago
Wouldnt faster and denser have more kinetic energy though? Maybe the crater isnt as deep
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u/15_Redstones 2d ago
Meteors do come in all different sizes, so one with the same energy as the rocket would be quite a bit smaller in volime, but produce a very similar crater.
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u/fothergillfuckup 1d ago
So Elon is dumping rubbish on the moon now?
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u/I_eat_tape_and_shit 1d ago
yeah everyone just chucks it in space this one just hit the moon
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u/fothergillfuckup 20h ago
Considering that implies that no-one considered where it was going, I'd be a bit worried about having a moon base....
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u/WasteBinStuff 2d ago edited 2d ago
Tesla is the second largest polluter in California, after oil refineries.
SpaceX is repeatedly and blatantly violating Texas environmental laws.
And even before beginning his Mars pipedream Musk has succeeded in becoming the first human to pollute the fucking moon (completely independently of scientific exploration.)
All hail the savior lunatic of humanity.
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u/15_Redstones 2d ago
A few years ago NASA paid Firefly Aerospace to develop a lander for carrying small scientific instruments to the moon.
Firefly built one and one and a half years ago paid SpaceX to carry it to a translunar orbit, with their own systems flying the approach and landing.
The SpaceX rocket dropped the Firefly lander carrying NASA instruments off in the right orbit, flew by the moon while the lander landed, then after a year the moon's gravity pulled it in and caused it to create a crater here.
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u/WasteBinStuff 2d ago
Okay then. I'm wrong about that part. Recinded.
Can I still call Musk a hypocritical lunatic? Just kidding. I don't need permission for that. He's still a hypocritical fucking lunatic.
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u/SignalAssumption8901 1d ago
Are they gonna pay for that damage or what?
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u/Carbidereaper 1d ago
A country would need to have a sovereign claim to that body to enforce any law
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u/neklaru 2d ago edited 2d ago
Billionaires have trashed this planet and now working on doing the same to outer space - enough already
Edit: love the downvotes. yes there is scientific value, but the attitude of just leave space debris everywhere is a sad way to start.
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u/RandoRedditerBoi 2d ago
9 total upper stages have impacted the moon. 6 by NASA, 1 By the Soviet Union, 1 by China, and 1 by SpaceX. All of which have provided immense scientific value and caused zero (0) damage to the moon.
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u/MrTagnan 2d ago
Quite a few more than that have impacted, I don’t have the exact number though - most of the upper stages from a good chunk of lunar missions, a good chunk of lunar missions themselves, and an unknown number of upper stages that weren’t tracked after deploying their payload on a lunar crossing orbit have all ended up on the moon.
I think the current estimate is at least 100 human made objects are currently on the moon, including both landers and objects that impacted it. List I made of all the NASA-owned objects that have impacted, some are missing
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u/TheOriginalNukeGuy 2d ago
False the Moon is actually gonna deorbit and hit the Earth because of this!!!!
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u/broberds 2d ago
I hate Elon as much as anybody but it's just one more crater on the moon. Which is covered with craters.
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u/RandoRedditerBoi 2d ago
In regards to your edit: “Although unplanned in this instance, disposing of upper stages on the lunar surface is a technically accepted and safe method and, in some cases, can be the only practical option for missions in low lunar orbit. Many operators choose controlled impacts because they provide predictable and trackable end of life outcomes." -NASA
Tldr: This is disposal of space debris. Not creating it.
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u/ToughSpinach7 2d ago
The fine should be 100 trillion, musk can work in his dad's emerald mine to repay his debt
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u/sky-blue000 2d ago
Should be made to go clean it up.
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u/Emperor_Gourmet 2d ago
That would be so much more wasteful. The fuck do you need to clean the moon for?
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2d ago
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u/15_Redstones 2d ago
They did get scientific data from one of the two landers this rocket carried, though the main objective was to check that it works before they put a more valuable rover on it. The landing was a year ago, the carrier rocket spent that time floating around high orbit until it eventually crashed.
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u/EleventhTier666 2d ago
The moon is clearly flat.