TL;DR: NASA+ is completely free — no subscription, no ads, no account — and it's where the agency streams its briefings and mission coverage, including anything it puts out about the new moon crater everyone is searching about. If what you actually want is a great asteroid documentary tonight, the deepest shelves are PBS's NOVA (free in the PBS app) and Curiosity Stream (about $5 a month).

Now the longer version, because this one's a little unusual: the thing trending isn't a show. It's a rock.

What happened, and why there's no live footage of it

An asteroid roughly the size of a six-story building slammed into the moon, and NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the fresh crater afterward — the agency is calling it a once-in-a-century find. Here's the part that matters for a streaming site: nobody filmed the impact itself. There is no dramatic live video of a fireball on the lunar surface, and anything on social media claiming to be that footage is either a simulation or a fake. What you can watch is real orbiter imagery, NASA's briefings about it, and a genuinely rich pile of documentaries about asteroids, impacts, and the people whose job is to spot these things before they find us.

So that's the guide I'm writing. Where the space stuff actually lives.

NASA+ is the free answer, and it's better than it has any right to be

NASA runs its own streaming service, NASA+, and it costs nothing. Not free-with-ads nothing — actually nothing. No sign-up, no credit card. You can watch at nasa.gov/plus, in the NASA app on Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, iOS, and Android, or on NASA's YouTube channel, which simulcasts most of the live stuff.

This is where press briefings, launch coverage, and mission updates stream, and it's also home to a surprisingly watchable library of original documentaries about current missions. I'll be honest: I expected government-agency production values and got something closer to a mid-tier streamer's science vertical. The interface is a little clunky — search is not its strong suit, so browse by series instead — but for live coverage of anything asteroid- or moon-related, this is the primary source. Everything else is downstream of it.

The asteroid documentary shelf, service by service

PBS (free app, or Passport with a donation). NOVA has been making asteroid and impact documentaries for decades, and several stream free in the PBS app — Meteor Strike, built around the 2013 Chelyabinsk fireball, is the one I'd start with. PBS rotates what's free versus what needs Passport (the member benefit you get for donating around $5 a month to your local station), so if a specific episode is locked, that's why. For pure science-per-minute, nobody beats NOVA.

Curiosity Stream (about $5 a month, less on the annual plan). This is the service I keep around purely for nights like this. It's a documentary-only streamer with a deep space and astronomy catalog — asteroid defense, planetary science, impact history, the works. It will never be anyone's main subscription, and it doesn't need to be at this price. If the moon-crater news sent you down a rabbit hole, this is the cheapest legal rabbit hole in streaming.

Apple TV+ (around $12.99 a month). The crown jewel here is Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds, Werner Herzog's meteorite documentary — equal parts science and Herzog being gloriously Herzog about cosmic doom. It's an Apple original, so it isn't going anywhere. And if the news has you in a space mood generally, For All Mankind — the alternate-history space-race drama — is the best series bonus any service on this list offers.

Netflix (ad plan around $8 a month). Netflix's space documentary bench rotates, but its Unknown documentary series has a strong space entry, and on the fiction side there's Don't Look Up, which is technically a comet movie and spiritually the most-streamed asteroid-anxiety film ever made. Worth it if you're already subscribed; I wouldn't sign up just for this.

Prime Video (included with Prime, about $15 a month). Good Night Oppy, the Mars rover documentary, isn't about asteroids — but it's the best film ever made about the kind of NASA robot that just spotted this crater, and it streams as a Prime original. Prime is also your rental storefront for everything below.

If you'd rather watch the movie version

Every time space rocks make the news, three movies spike: Deep Impact (the thoughtful one), Armageddon (the loud one), and Greenland (the sleeper — genuinely tense, and I'll die on this hill). All three bounce between services month to month, so I won't pretend to know where they'll be sitting when you read this — check JustWatch or the services' own search. The reliable fallback: each rents for around $4 on Prime Video, Apple TV, or Fandango at Home, and a rental beats subscribing to a service for one title every single time.

The time-sensitive part (September 2026 — this section will age)

Right now, the fresh coverage of the new crater is coming through NASA's channels: briefings and imagery releases on NASA+ and NASA's YouTube channel, with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team posting images through NASA's site. If NASA schedules a dedicated briefing, it will stream free on both. There's no way to "watch the crater live" beyond released imagery — the orbiter isn't a webcam. Everything above this section — the documentaries, the services, the prices give or take a dollar — will still be accurate long after this news cycle ends.

FAQ

Is NASA+ really free? What's the catch? Really free, no catch, no ads. It's a public agency; you already paid for it. No account required on any platform.

Is there video of the asteroid actually hitting the moon? No. The impact wasn't observed live — the crater was discovered afterward by orbiter cameras. Treat any "live footage" clip you see on social media as fake.

What's the single cheapest way to binge asteroid documentaries? Free tier: NASA+ plus the PBS app. Paid tier: Curiosity Stream at roughly $5 a month is the best documentary-per-dollar deal in streaming, full stop.

Do I need cable for any of this? Not for a single thing on this page — which makes a nice change from my sports guides.

That's the whole map. Start with NASA+ because it's free and it's the source, keep PBS on your phone like a responsible adult, and let Herzog narrate you to sleep. If a once-in-a-century rock hits the moon and all it costs you is five bucks and an evening, I'd call that a good trade. Happy watching — I'll be over here re-renting Greenland again.

— Priya Raman