The crater, named McGetchin, is 728 feet (222 meters) wide and 141 feet (43 meters) deep and was revealed by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
Scientists have found a big new crater on the Moon which is said to have been created by ‘once-in-a-century’ impact.
The discovery was made by the scientists of NASA during ‘routine data-quality check’ during which Robert Wagner, a scientist with NASA’s LRO, scanned a giant Moon map on his computer screen. The impact that led to the formation of the crater may have occurred sometime between April 11 and May 22, 2024, according to the researchers who published a paper about their discovery in Science Advances.
Scientists say it is the largest newly formed crater yet discovered anywhere in the solar system, NASA said in a statement. The crater, roughly the size of two American football fields may have been created by a comet or an asteroid approximately the size of a three- to six-storey building that slammed into the moon, scientists have said. He found an unusually large bright spot circled by a dark halo caught his eye, as it implied that surface material in that area had been shaken up, NASA said in a statement.
Wagner then compared the before and after images of the Moon and realised he had discovered the largest, newly formed crater ever found in the solar system. Scientists estimate that an impact of this magnitude happens on the Moon about once in a century or even longer.
