NASA has released new lunar images confirming that a SpaceX Falcon 9 second stage slammed into the Moon on Aug. 5, 2026, at roughly 8,700 kilometers per hour, carving out a crater 18 meters wide and nearly 3 meters deep near the Moon’s western limb. The object, identified as international designation 2025-010D, was the upper stage from a Falcon 9 launch on Jan. 15, 2025, that carried two lunar missions: Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1, which later made a successful soft landing, and ispace’s Resilience, which ended in failure. NASA said Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images taken on Aug. 11 and 12 captured bright and dark ejecta rays around the impact site. The agency said the brighter material came from freshly excavated subsurface layers, while the darker streaks likely came from weathered material about 46 centimeters below the surface. South Korea’s Danuri orbiter had earlier published images from Aug. 5 and estimated the crater could be as large as 27 meters. The crash is the second known unintentional lunar impact caused by human-made hardware. SpaceX said it is working with NASA on ways to prevent similar uncontrolled Moon impacts, as regulatory gaps in cislunar space become harder to ignore.

JPMorgan said in an Aug. 6 research note that the data communications market is set to grow at a 28% compound annual rate over the next five years, topping $70 billion by 2030. It said 1.6T products will be the biggest growth driver, while pluggable optics will lead through 2028 before NPO and CPO take over the incremental growth afterward. The report also pointed to Google and Meta as key buyers, and said Nvidia may regain share in the near term even as its long-term market share declines.

MiCA licensing reviews go far beyond an EU address, a director, and paid-in capital. Regulators are testing whether CASPs truly operate inside the EU across staffing, ICT control, financial resilience, and outsourcing.