NASA spacecraft discovers a huge new crater on the moon
- NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team identified a newly formed 222-meter-wide lunar crater named McGetchin on the Moon's near side, which formed between April 11 and May 22, 2024.
- A comet or asteroid roughly the size of a three- to six-story building struck the lunar surface, releasing approximately 65 billion kilojoules of energy in an impact estimated to occur only once every 132 years.
- Follow-Up thermal data from the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment revealed a 4-mile-wide cold spot around the crater measuring around 16 degrees Fahrenheit cooler at night, indicating the impact loosened surface material and reduced heat retention.
- NASA engineers are calculating the risk of ejected material striking the agency's planned moon base, using these impact measurements to design structures capable of withstanding high-velocity debris.
- The findings, published in Science Advances on Wednesday, offer a rare opportunity to study a recent, large-scale impact as NASA prepares for sustained human presence on the Moon and expanded commercial activities.
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A denser layer of material may be hidden beneath a huge crater on the Martian moon, which could help solve the billion-year-old mystery of Phobos' origins.
It is 222 meters wide and originated when no one looked at it: scientists call the impact a century event. What it can reveal about the solar system.
Scientists have discovered a crater on the moon that was created by an impact from a foreign body two years ago and initially went unnoticed. At about 730 feet (222 meters) across and up to 140 feet (43 meters) deep, the crater is larger than the Colosseum in Rome, the AP reported. According to scientists, an event of this scale occurs about once every 130 years. The crater was named McGetchin after Thomas McGetchin, former director of the Lunar…
It was an accidental discovery, but also a reminder that even after almost two decades of observing the Moon, Lunar Recognition Orbiter still manages to reveal recent events in a world that is far from geologically immobile.
NASA has identified the largest new impact crater on the lunar surface in the last century. The giant structure, named McGetchin Crater, has been confirmed to have been formed by an asteroid or comet fragment impact in the spring of 2024. Measuring 222 meters wide and 43 meters deep, this crater is located near Italy...
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