NASA Orbiter Spots Record Lunar Crater From 2024 Impact

Scientists have identified a fresh impact crater on the moon's near side that ranks as the largest such feature formed in the solar system in recent times. The steep-walled depression, measuring roughly 222 metres across and up to 43 metres deep, was carved out about two years ago by a fragment of an asteroid or comet. It is wider than the Roman Colosseum.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured the scar in May 2024, shortly after the strike, but the wide-angle images sat unnoticed in the mission's data stream until August 2025. Closer pictures followed last autumn, and the find was confirmed early this year. The impact had eluded real-time detection by telescopes on the ground and in orbit.

Researchers estimate that an event of this scale occurs only about once every 132 years, describing it in one of two studies published on Wednesday in Science Advances as a statistically rare, effectively once-in-a-lifetime observation.

The crater has been named for Thomas McGetchin, a former director of Houston's Lunar and Planetary Institute. It is three times the size of the previous record-holder found by the LRO a decade ago. While the moon bears ancient impact scars stretching more than 2,400 kilometres across, the new feature stands out as the biggest known crater formed in the recent era.

The strike churned the lunar surface over a distance exceeding 100 kilometres. Dust and rocky soil were thrown outward at a steeper angle than expected, according to Mark Robinson, chief scientist for the LRO's cameras and lead author of one of the studies.

A companion study identified a cold spot about seven kilometres wide around the crater, consistent with a loosening of the moon's topsoil. Co-author David Paige of the University of California, Los Angeles, compared the process to gardening, describing impacts as a way of churning sediments and bringing buried material to the surface.

Findings from the LRO's crater surveys since its 2009 launch indicate that the moon's uppermost two centimetres of soil are overturned by ejected material roughly every 80,000 years, a faster rate than previously believed. That timescale means the dusty footprints left by the Apollo moonwalkers will not survive indefinitely, Robinson said.

The next task for researchers is to assess the risk that material thrown up by such impacts could strike NASA's planned lunar base. Robinson said the data would help engineers design sturdier structures, reducing concerns about damage.