A recent meteor strike was detected in images taken by
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on the Moon’s far side, occurring in April or May 2024.
A crater as wide as two American football fields formed in spring 2024, a size expected roughly once a century. A NASA orbiter got to watch.
www.sciencenews.org
The crater is 225 meters wide, a size expected only once every 139 years
By Lisa Grossman March 23, 2026, at 11:00 am
New 225 m (738 feet) crater discovered on the Moon. Image credit: Robinson et al.
A once-in-a-century crater formed on the moon right under our noses. A routine search of images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter camera found
a fresh crater as wide as two American football fields, planetary scientist
Mark Robinson reported
March 17 at the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Meeting in The Woodlands, Texas.
The crater is 225 meters wide and formed in April or May 2024, Robinson said. According to predictions based on other lunar landmarks, a crater that big should form only once in 139 years. The discovery can help highlight the risks
impacts pose to future astronauts
One of the first craters the orbiter spotted after it began its mission in 2009 was 70 meters wide, said Robinson, of Houston-based spaceflight company Intuitive Machines. “I used to joke with folks … that now the bar has been set, you have to find a 100-meter crater,” he said. “Now, lo and behold, we have 225 meters.”
The crater seems to have formed on a
boundary between the cratered and craggy lunar highlands and a wide, flat mare, which formed from liquid magma pooling on the moon’s surface. Its depth, about 43 meters on average, and its steep edges suggest it formed in strong material like solidified lava. But its shape is slightly elongated, which suggests the ground beneath the crater is not all the same, Robinson said.
The crater is also surrounded by a
bright blanket of ejecta — rock and dust that splashed out in all directions when the impact occurred — that extends hundreds of meters from the rim. Robinson and colleagues found other disturbances as far as 120 kilometers from the crater.
That could be bad news for
future moon bases. Bits of rock ejected from impacts could hit lunar habitats at high speeds from very far away. Buildings will need to be designed to survive that. “You’ve got to protect your assets to withstand small particles hitting you at order of magnitude a kilometer per second,” Robinson said.
I say the odds are still
being calculated and are not a certainty, given the
latest session's insights
Update:
MASSIVE COMET! Will C/2026 A1 Break Apart in the Corona?
Mar 25, 2026
#NSN #NASA #Astronomy
A newly discovered sungrazing comet, C 2026 A1 MAPS, will pass extremely close to the Sun on April 4, 2026. Scientists are watching to see whether it survives and becomes briefly visible from Earth.Paperlink :
http://www.aerith.net/comet/catalog/2...
00:00 Introduction
00:50 DISCOVERY
04:03 SCIENTIFIC IMPORTANCE & THEORIES
07:11 IMPLICATIONS & WHAT’S NEXT
10:13 Outro
10:37 Enjoy
