Nasa spots biggest new Moon crater ever recorded
The surface of the Moon is covered in craters - some small, some massive
- Published
A huge crater the length of two football fields has been discovered on the Moon, over a year after something smashed into it.
A robotic Nasa spacecraft called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) photographed the 728-foot-wide crater which formed on the surface in 2024.
Experts say it's the largest newly formed crater ever found in the solar system.
The crater was initially captured from the Wide-Angle Camera of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC).
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An overhead view of the crater
Scientists reported on 16 September in the journal Science Advances that it is the largest newly formed crater ever found in the solar system.
At 141 feet deep, Nasa says it would be large enough to hold three US style yellow school buses stacked vertically one on top of another.
When Robert Wagner, a scientist with NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), looked at a giant Moon map on his computer screen, he saw an unusually large bright spot circled by a dark halo, it suggested ground in that area had been shaken up.
By comparing before and after images of the Moon, he was able to work out that it was the Moon's largest newly created crater.
After his discovery scientists used the Narrow-Angle Camera which takes more detailed pictures to reveal the crater's size and shape.
They were also able to work out the size and the force of the rock that had hit it.
A zoomed-in image of the Moon
It is estimated the crater formed on the Moon's eastern edge sometime between 11 April and 22 May, 2024, after a comet or asteroid hit the surface.
An impact like this is extremely rare and scientists say they likely happen once every hundred years.
Unlike Earth, which has an atmosphere which can slow or burn up space rocks before they reach the ground, the Moon is constantly hit by asteroids, meteoroids and other objects.
This is what gives the Moon its distinctive marked surface.
Over the 17 years which the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been circling and mapping the Moon the spacecraft team has identified at least 1,000 new impact craters, but this one is the biggest yet.
