Between April 11 and May 22, 2024, a six-story-building-sized asteroid slammed into the Moon, carving out the McGetchin crater—a massive structure measuring 222 meters in diameter and up to 43 meters deep. Identified by NASA scientist Robert Wagner using Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data, such rare impacts occur roughly once every 132 years.
Decoding the McGetchin Impact Event
According to NASA data, formations like the McGetchin crater occur on average once every 132 years. Named after lunar researcher Tom McGetchin, the newly identified structure spans two football fields across and plunges nearly 150 feet into the lunar regolith.
Robert Wagner surfaced this discovery by exhaustively scanning telemetry and imagery captured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). While the LRO routinely logs about 140 smaller new craters every year—typically triggered by impactors the size of a large car wheel leaving scars at least 10 meters wide—finding a 222-meter scar is a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical observation.
Space Junk Meets the Lunar Surface
Natural asteroids aren’t the only objects reshaping the Moon’s geography. On Wednesday, August 5, 2026, a discarded upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket struck the lunar surface in an uncontrolled collision. This specific booster launched in January 2025, successfully deploying two commercial lunar landers—one from the United States and another from Japan—before drifting in space under the influence of gravity.
This massive kinetic energy unleashed a violent plume of dust and pulverized rock near the Einstein and Bell craters. NASA measurements indicate the resulting man-made crater spans roughly 60 feet wide and 12 feet deep. Meanwhile, separate research led by a scientific team under a researcher named Fernando estimates a broader impact zone measuring between 20 and 30 meters in diameter.
The Data Breakdown: Natural Asteroids vs. Orbital Debris
Comparing these two distinct lunar impact events highlights the shifting dynamics of lunar morphology:
- McGetchin Crater: Formed by a natural asteroid between April 11 and May 22, 2024. Diameter: 222 meters; Depth: up to 43 meters. Statistical frequency: once every 132 years.
- SpaceX Falcon 9 Impact: Formed by human-made space debris on August 5, 2026. Width: ~60 feet (approx. 18-30 meters depending on analysis); Depth: 12 feet (approx. 3 meters). Velocity: over 5,400 mph.
- Routine Micro-Impacts: Roughly 140 small craters under 10 meters form annually, cataloged continuously by NASA’s LRO over its multi-decade mission.
Assessing Orbital Debris Risks
The unintended collision of the Falcon 9 booster underscores mounting concerns regarding space debris management. As commercial and government lunar missions accelerate, spent rocket stages and dead satellites increasingly clutter cislunar space. While neither impact posed any threat to Earth—moving along trajectories entirely detached from our planet’s gravitational pull—these events give researchers empirical data on how lunar regolith responds to high-velocity stress. Planetary scientists utilize these collision signatures to model future infrastructure hardening and refine landing trajectory physics.
