Archive for August, 2026
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August 5th, 2026
Lowell Discovery Telescope (LDT) Image credit: Lowell Observatory
Scientists at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona report they detected a plume from the impact August 5 from that errant SpaceX rocket stage.
“We can safely say that we measured a response from the rocket stage impact as a sodium and lithium gas plume a few 10’s of kilometers in size lasting between 5 and 10 minutes after impact,” Carl Schmidt tells Inside Outer Space.
Schmidt is an assistant research professor at Boston University’s Center for Space Physics.
Graduate students are working on the data from the two telescopes at Lowell Observatory producing an early crude analysis, Schmidt said.
Two efforts
There were two efforts to observe the event at Lowell Observatory. One using fast imaging to record the brief light from the fireball, predicted to last a fraction of a second.
Observers at the 4.3-meter Lowell Discovery Telescope (LDT) in Happy Jack, Arizona, were also to use a long slit spectrograph to try and measure the sodium gas plume which was anticipated to persist for several minutes.
LDT is the 5th-largest optical telescope in the United States.
An illustration of the Moon with an arrow pointing to the predicted impact site for the Falcon 9 upper stage. Image credit: Bill Gray/Project Pluto
Unknown unknowns
The event was a literal “dust up” on the lunar landscape.
That Falcon 9 upper stage was a leftover from the launch that sent Firefly’s Blue Ghost-1 lander to the moon on Jan. 15, 2025. Also sent moonward on that flight was the Hakuto-R Mission 2, called Resilience, a robotic lunar lander developed by the Japanese company ispace.
The rocket stage collision on August 5 was pegged to occur near Einstein/Bell Craters near the lunar limb. What was not known: would the event be visible by ground and space-based assets.
Despite all the unknown unknowns, and modeling uncertainties, some specialists suggested if you’ve had the time and observational prowess, it was worth a look.
Such was the case for the Lowell Observatory.
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How will Mars crews beat the martian environment, including dust, to perform duties on the Red Planet?
Image credit: Composite image by Ella Maru Studio for the National Academy of Sciences
Planting boots on Mars is hard enough. But getting “breathing room” on the Red Planet without inhaling toxic dust is yet another issue.
Given the outlook that future human crews will strut their right stuff across the Red Planet, NASA assembled earlier this year a Martian Dust Limit Working Group. Their task was to review what’s known and unknown about the toxicological hazard to human crews from exposure Mars dust.
Permissible exposure limit
That review was made to support the establishment of a permissible exposure limit for humans on the Red Planet.
The working group compiled a comprehensive set of expert perspectives regarding Martian dust toxicology, exposure pathways, and mitigation strategies.
Lunar dust haunted Apollo moonwalkers, termed the “dusty dozen.”
Image credit: NASA/Azita Valinia
For more details, go to my new Space.com story – “Mars dust is toxic. How will future astronauts deal with it?” – at:
https://www.space.com/astronomy/mars/mars-dust-is-toxic-how-will-future-astronauts-deal-with-it
A big bruiser of a rocket stage. SpaceX photo of one of the company’s Falcon 9 second stages, taken in 2022. A similar second stage is expected to impact the moon in August 2026.
Image credit: SpaceX
The Moon is in the cross-hairs of a SpaceX rocket stage, slamming into our celestial neighbor on August 5 at roughly 2:35:37.5 AM (US) Eastern Daylight Time reports astronomer, Bill Gray of Project Pluto.
That high-speed impact “may produce potential observables,” according to research led by Benjamin Fernando at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
— The impact flash: a brief flash of light lasting less than one second in duration produced by the vaporization of the impactor.
— The impact plume: a cloud of ejecta (and possibly vapor) lofted above the lunar surface and evolving on a timescale of minutes.
— The resultant crater: a final crater diameter of 20-30 meters is expected based on computer models.
— A double crater. This feature may be produced if the large rocket stage is “decapitated,” which may occur depending on the stage’s attitude at the time of impact.
Before and after impact pictures
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
After the impact several Moon-orbiting spacecraft are to make follow-up observations.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has acquired both baseline (before) and will take post-impact (after) imagery.
Buzz by flyby
Here’s an interesting note.
Credit: Korean Aerospace Research Institute
Korea’s Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter will experience a “close conjunction” with the rocket stage as it plunges into the lunar landscape. In near-miss terms – roughly on the order of a few kilometers or less – the rocket stage will zoom by the Korean spacecraft roughly two minutes prior to the stage’s impact.
Like LRO, Korea’s Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter has taken imaging of the crash site and follow-up imagery is planned in as close to real time as possible.
An illustration of the Moon with an arrow pointing to a predicted impact site for the Falcon 9 upper stage 2025-010D in August 2026, courtesy of Project Pluto. Image credit: Bill Gray/Project Pluto
Resources
Also, go to my previous stories:
Moon Plume: Saga of a Spent SpaceX Rocket Stage Impact
https://www.leonarddavid.com/moon-plume-saga-of-a-spent-spacex-rocket-stage-impact/
A SpaceX rocket will slam into the moon this August. Will we be able to see it?
A SpaceX rocket will crash into the moon this week, and scientists aren’t sure what to expect
Meet the Neighbors – Life on Mars and How to Find It by Steven A. Benner; Allen Lane, (an imprint of Penguin Books); July 2026; 416 pages (Hardcover); $40.99 (Amazon).
Talk about a “cold case” – nothing like dealing with life on Mars where the temperature can drop like a rock to roughly – 89°C at night. But that’s just one factor when thinking about is or isn’t there life on Mars today.
Twin NASA spacecraft Mars missions were launched in the 1970’s: a Viking 1 lander planted its legs on the terrain of Chryse Planitia on July 20, 1976, with the Viking 2 lander touching down months later at Utopia Planitia on September 3. Both asked a key question: Is there life on Mars?
Among their duties, the dual landers scooped up the first soil samples of Mars and deposited those precious collectibles into onboard, specialized equipment. To answer their query about life on the Red Planet, Viking scientists had tightly boxed up their cares and woes and sent that science gear to probe that issue.
Here’s the Red Planet rub. After interpreting all the Viking mission call backs: a majority consensus of scientists at the time was that Viking relayed a “no life on Mars” result.
However, is it possible that the two robots actually radioed back a very clear comeback: “Can you repeat the question?’’
Thought provoking chapters
Steven A. Benner is a chemist, synthetic biologist, paleogenetist, and astrobiologist – and author of this exemplary tale and head spinning volume.
You must read this book – a trite saying, but important to emphasize that point to space groupies, chemists, biologists, geologists, historians, philosophers, and scientific soothsayers.
There are those that might get bogged down in a chapter. No worries, Benner adds, skip to the next. Each chapter comes with a bullet point list of conclusions.
The book supplies witty and wonderful thought-provoking chapters, such as: “Our Place in the Cosmos,” “How ‘Yes Life’ Became ‘No Life’”; “Seeking Extant Martian Life Remained . . .Low Priority”; “The Motivational Logic of Exploration” to “The Origins of Life. A Solution”; “How Martian Life Might Survive” and the clarion chapter call “Astrobiologists of the World, Unite!”
In the past, missions to Mars might “follow the water.” They might assess “habitability.” They might even look for signs of ancient Martian life, says Brenner.
But now missions to seek extant life on Mars have been off the table. What’s going wrong here?
Image credit: Meet the Neighbors/Benner
Big questions
Importantly, this book also tells another story generated from Viking. It illustrates how actual scientists manage research that addresses “big questions.”
“For Viking, anomalous results that might have led to a back-and-forth discussion to correct mistakes in interpretations were rationalized away,” the author suggests. Benner provides examples of how fact and logic can prove less important than “culture” in a community of scientists.
Benner writes that the results of the Viking mission can all be explained by bacterial autotrophs that respire with stored oxygen on Mars (BARSOOMS). BARSOOM is the acronym for a Bacterial Autotrophthat Respires using Stored Oxygen.
“It is hard to not be enthusiastic about the results delivered by the Viking landers,” Benner writes. “Yes, with more money and more payload, more experiments could have been done. The conclusions might have been made more secure. But to repurpose a lyric from Meat Loaf, three out of three ain’t bad.”
Benner writes: “You might think therefore that the community would have changed its consensus opinion. You might think that the community would have had a collective Aha! moment. You might think that the search for extant life on Mars would be back on the table. You would be wrong,” he explains.
Propositions
Yes, science is hard, explains Benner, “especially for ape descendants.” Still, advocacy has a logic. “For extant Martian life, we can break that logic into propositions that we can examine individually,” the author suggests.
— Life arose on Mars
— Life survived on Mars
— We know how to identify any extant life that we will encounter on Mars
— We know where to access places on Mars where any extant life survives
From Benner there’s a call to action: “Astrobiologists of the world, unite! Do risky things. Seek to answer big questions. You have nothing to lose, and a world (Mars) to win.”
For more information on this landmark book, go to:
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/477954/meet-the-neighbors-by-benner-steven-a/9780241808306
Lunar south pole.
Image credit: CGTN/Inside Outer Space screengrab
What’s shaking about water ice deposits on the Moon?
Turns out that assessing how seismic waves propagate on the Moon could be used to locate and map ice buried beneath the lunar surface.
A new study by geologists at the University of Maryland (UMD), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Hawaii shows that seismic waves—the same kind of vibrations measured during earthquakes here on our planet — could be used to pick up the seismic signature of lunar ice.
The team’s findings have been published in the journal Science Advances on July 31.
Live off the land
“It’s crucial to identify any materials on the Moon that an astronaut can make use of while they’re up there,” said Nicholas Schmerr, an associate professor in UMD’s Department of Geological, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences and a co-author of the study.
“Since they will be limited by the few resources they brought from Earth,” Schmerr explains, “anything they find on the Moon will help them basically live off the land, especially for longer-term missions or outposts.”
Image credit: NASA
Frozen shadows
Water ice hidden in the deep, frozen shadows of lunar polar craters may well be one of the most valuable resources an astronaut can find.
Ice can become drinking water, split apart with electricity to yield oxygen to breathe and hydrogen for rocket propellant.
So finding quantities of water ice could radically reduce what future missions need to haul from Earth.
But there’s a glitch
Presently, no one knows for sure how much ice is on the Moon, where it is, and in what condition it is for extraction and processing.
“The idea behind the team’s work was straightforward: frozen soil and dry soil behave very differently when a seismic wave passes through them,” states a UMD press statement. “Ice stiffens whatever it’s mixed into, making vibrations travel two to three times faster than they would through dry dirt. Ice-rich zones can also cause seismic energy to bounce back rather than pass through, much like how sounds can echo off a wall.”
Image credit: NASA
Schmerr added that a well-placed seismometer on the Moon would be able to detect these effects. “We can use seismic waves to not just see whether ice is present but also roughly how much of it there is,” he stated.
Testing, testing, testing
To test their idea, the researchers took three approaches.
Harrison Lisabeth, a rock physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who led the research, froze a volcanic rock from Arizona that when crushed, closely mimics lunar dust.
Using X-rays, researchers studied how ice settles into tiny gaps between soil grains.
Co-author Matthew Siegler from the University of Hawaii modeled detailed temperature maps of the Moon’s south polar region, identifying which craters stayed cold enough to preserve ice for billions of years.
At UMD, Schmerr ran computer simulations of small moonquakes rippling through and interacting with underground lunar ice.
The result?
In every case, the ice left clear and measurable marks on the seismic data.
Chang’e-7.
Image credit: CCTV/Inside Outer Space screengrab
Predictions
As noted in the UMD press statement, the research team won’t have to wait long to put their predictions to the test.
China’s Chang’e-7 mission, expected to be launched later this month, is equipped with a seismograph to study moonquakes and probe the lunar interior.
The robotic lander is targeted to land near Shackleton Crater in late 2026. At that location, numerous suspected ice deposits are present.
Additionally, NASA’s Artemis astronauts will potentially deploy the Lunar Environmental Monitoring Station, an instrument UMD’s Schmerr helped develop for seismic exploration.
“Our findings are laying the groundwork for an observation we’ll get in the next couple of years,” Schmerr said. “No one has physically measured the ice on the moon yet, but we now have a prediction for what to look out for. That’s an important first step.”
To gain access to the research paper — “The seismic signature of lunar ice” – go to:
