Newly formed moon crater is once-in-a-century discovery

• NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted a new lunar crater. It’s the largest newly formed crater yet found in the solar system.
• The crater formed between April 11 and May 22, 2024, when a rock the size of a 3- to 6-story building hit the moon. It’s about 728 feet wide and 141 feet deep (222 m wide and 43 m deep). This size of lunar impact only occurs about once a century or longer.
• The impact disturbed the lunar soil over a much larger area. It created a 4-mile-wide zone (6.4 km) that is about 16 F (8.8 C) colder at night because the loosened soil doesn’t retain heat as well.

NASA published this original story on September 16, 2026. Edits by EarthSky.

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Newly formed moon crater is once-in-a-century discovery

It started as a routine data-quality check. But as Robert Wagner – an image processing specialist with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) – scanned a giant moon map on his computer screen, an unusually large bright spot circled by a dark halo caught his eye. It implied that surface material in that area had been shaken up. He said:

I just stopped, dropped everything, and started looking into what that spot was.

By comparing before and after images of the moon, Wagner realized he had discovered the largest newly formed crater ever found in the solar system. This discovery highlights the value of NASA’s moon orbiter data in studying a dynamic landscape as the agency advances a sustained human presence and expanded scientific and commercial activity on the moon.

It was officially named McGetchin after pioneering lunar scientist Tom McGetchin. The crater formed on the moon’s eastern edge sometime between April 11 and May 22, 2024, after a comet or asteroid the size of a three- to six-story building hit the surface.

The crash left a crater 728 feet (222 meters) wide, spanning the length of two football fields. And at 141 feet (43 meters) deep, the crater could fit three vertically stacked yellow school buses.

Scientists estimate that an impact of this magnitude happens on the moon about once in a century or even longer.

The researchers published two papers on the crater. The first was published by Science Advances on September 16, 2026. The peer-reviewed Science Advances also published the second paper on September 16, 2026.

The moon takes some hits

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been circling the moon for more than 17 years. It uses its seven instruments to map the topography, surface composition, temperature and radiation environment there. The spacecraft’s team has identified at least 1,000 new impact craters throughout the mission and flagged 100,000 more surface changes from an object smashing into the moon or from the debris that flung out after.

With no atmosphere to slow them or burn them up, space rocks and other objects easily reach the lunar surface. Most are much smaller compared to the object that carved out McGetchin crater. The smallest craters scientists can distinguish from LRO images are about 30 feet wide, the length of a three-story building laid on its side. The rocks that make those craters are about 43 inches wide (110 cm), the size of a monster-truck tire. Scientists estimate that impacts of this scale produce about 140 new craters across the moon each year. But most new ones are from microscopic projectiles that leave holes too small to identify in orbital images.

What a cool impact!

With its numerous instruments, the spacecraft can observe changes to the lunar surface that aren’t apparent in the Orbiter’s images alone. After the crater discovery, scientists working with the craft’s thermal instrument, Diviner, made follow-up observations of the site. They found a 4-mile-wide area around the crater that is about 16 degrees F (8.8 C) cooler at night than its surroundings.

Researchers said the cooling happens because the impact fluffs up the regolith around the crater, making it less dense and therefore less able to retain heat. The large extent of this “cold spot” is striking, scientists said, because it shows that impacts can modify the moon’s surface far beyond the crater itself. These physical changes could affect how rover wheels interact with the surface, for instance.

Road to discovery of newly formed moon crater

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter collects images from about 60 miles (96 km) above the moon as it loops from pole to pole. The system includes two cameras that capture high-resolution black-and-white images and one camera for moderate-resolution multispectral images. Over the years and thousands of passes, scientists have built maps detailed enough to spot not only new craters, but also landslides, landers, seismic faults and even hints of lava tubes.

Mission scientists regularly analyze close-up images of small portions of the moon’s surface from the Narrow-Angle Camera. Using these images, they look for changes that are typically less than 30 feet across. But every few years the team searches for large (wider than 150 feet) features by creating global moon maps and comparing them to older versions.

That’s what Wagner was doing on October 24, 2025, when he came across McGetchin. Using images from the Orbiter’s Wide-Angle Camera – which captures broad views with pixels the size of football fields – he stacked hundreds of “before” and “after” frames with software designed to highlight change. Anything that stayed the same turned gray while anything different showed up as bright or dark patches.

One spot stood out

While the process sounds straightforward, spotting real craters requires a lot of manual work. The software flags every tiny shift in lighting or shadow, generating hundreds of false alarms. For this reason, Wagner typically verifies the software, looking for small fuzzy halos around pixel-wide bright points. These indicate splashes of regolith around a new crater.

Spanning hundreds of pixels, McGetchin stood out immediately. Wagner said:

It was by far the most obvious impact debris pattern I’ve ever seen in one of these images.

After his discovery, scientists turned to the Narrow-Angle Camera, which takes much sharper views at about 3 feet per pixel. This camera’s close-up images, taken as LRO flew over the impact site again, revealed the crater size, shape and how the surrounding terrain was affected. These images also helped researchers estimate the size and force of the rock fragment that formed the new crater, details that should appear in a future paper.

Bottom line: Sometime in early 2024, a space rock slammed into the moon, creating a brand new crater in the lunar surface. The newly formed moon crater is about 728 feet wide and 141 feet deep.

Source: A new 222-m diameter lunar crater

Source: New lunar crater reveals extensive distal regolith modification

Via NASA

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