NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has detected a massive, roughly 728-foot-wide impact crater on the Moon’s near side, created between April and May 2024 by an asteroid or comet. Scientists calculate this rare event happens about once a century, making it the largest newly formed impact crater discovered in the solar system.
What started as a routine data-quality check on a computer screen revealed an unexpected geological scar. Robert Wagner, an image-processing specialist from Intuitive Machines working with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) system, was scanning a giant Moon map when an unusually bright spot surrounded by a dark halo caught his attention. He just stopped, dropped everything, and started looking into what that spot was,
according to NASA announcements.
By comparing before and after images of the lunar surface, Wagner confirmed the discovery of a steep-sided crater spanning 728 feet (222 meters) in diameter and plunging about 141 feet (43 meters) deep. For scale, the hole is bigger than the Roman Colosseum and deep enough to fit three vertically stacked yellow school buses. Researchers formally named the site McGetchin after the late Thomas McGetchin, a pioneering lunar scientist and former director of Houston’s Lunar and Planetary Institute.
How the McGetchin Impact Event Unfolded
The colossal indentation formed on the Moon’s eastern edge sometime between April 11 and May 22, 2024, after a cosmic projectile roughly the size of a three- to six-story building slammed into the surface. Telescopes on Earth and in space completely missed the collision in real time. The strike only came to light when LROC wide-angle camera images were processed in August 2025, followed by detailed follow-up photographs last fall and formal confirmation early this year.
In a pair of studies published in the journal Science Advances, researchers noted that the impact churned the lunar surface across a span of more than 66 miles. Dust and rocky soil hurled outward at a higher angle than expected. Mark Robinson, chief scientist for the LRO cameras at Intuitive Machines and lead author of one of the studies, emphasized the rarity of the event. This event constitutes a statistically rare, effectively once-in-a-lifetime observation,
the research team wrote, noting that crater production models indicate impacts of this magnitude occur only once every 132 years.
Thermal Anomalies and the Lunar Gardening Effect
Beyond the physical dimensions of the crater itself, multispectral imaging hardware on the orbiter uncovered unexpected thermal properties surrounding the impact site. Measurements taken by the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment revealed a roughly 4-mile (7-kilometer) cold region encircling McGetchin crater.
Scientists collaborating from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and other institutions suspect that loosened lunar regolith kicked up by the impact retains heat far less effectively than densely packed moon rock.
The LRO’s extensive crater discoveries since its 2009 launch demonstrate that the top inch of the Moon’s soil is overturned by ejected material every 80,000 years. Robinson noted that this rapid churning means the famous dusty footprints left by Apollo moonwalkers will definitely be long gone in that time frame.
Preparing Infrastructure for Future Moon Bases
The discovery arrives as NASA advances plans to establish a sustained human presence and commercial activity on the lunar surface. Understanding how meteorite impacts alter terrain far beyond the crater boundaries provides vital engineering data for expanded scientific and commercial activity on the Moon.
The immediate practical priority for mission planners is calculating the risk of ejected crater material striking planned infrastructure.
As LRO continues its mission after more than 17 years in orbit, documenting these rare events helps transform unpredictable cosmic hazards into manageable parameters for deep-space exploration.
