NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has discovered a massive 222-meter-wide crater on the Moon, estimated to form roughly once in a lifetime, or ~130 years. Formed between April 11 and May 22, 2024, the fresh impact site provides researchers a rare, pristine look at the immediate effects of lunar cratering.
It started as a routine data-quality check. But as Robert Wagner, a scientist with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), scanned a giant Moon map on his computer screen, 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.
“I just stopped, dropped everything, and started looking into what that spot was,”
Robert Wagner, an image-processing specialist from Intuitive Machines who works with data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) system.
By comparing before and after images of the Moon, Wagner realized he had discovered the largest, newly formed crater ever found in the solar system, as scientists reported Wednesday in Science Advances. Officially named McGetchin after lunar scientist Tom McGetchin, the crater formed on the Moon’s eastern edge sometime between April 11 and May 22, 2024, after a comet or asteroid struck the surface.
Dimensions and Scientific Significance of McGetchin Crater
Officially named McGetchin after Thomas McGetchin by the International Astronomical Union, the steep-sided hole—about 728 feet (222 meters) across and up to 141 feet (43 meters) deep—is the solar system’s biggest known impact crater carved out in recent times. Such a large-scale event is estimated to occur only once every 132 years, researchers said, making this a treasure trove of information as NASA prepares to build a base for astronauts on the moon. The study, published in Science Advances, was conducted by members of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) science team, including Principal Investigator and lead author Dr. Mark Robinson of Intuitive Machines and co-author Dr. Julie Stopar of USRA’s Lunar and Planetary Institute.
This event constitutes a statistically rare, effectively once-in-a-lifetime observation,
the scientists wrote in one of two studies appearing on the subject Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the crater on the moon’s near side in May 2024 soon after it was formed by an incoming fragment of an asteroid or comet. The moon strike escaped real-time detection by telescopes on Earth and in space, and LRO’s wide-angle images were not identified in the crush of data until August 2025.
The crater shows the immediate effects of the impact cratering process before exposure to space and meteorite bombardment wears it down and hence is very useful for further studies. This discovery highlights the value of NASA’s Moon orbiter data in studying a dynamic landscape as the agency advances a sustained human presence and expanded scientific and commercial activity on the Moon.
Evaluating Infrastructure Risks for Future Lunar Bases
The discovery arrives as space agencies and commercial entities lay groundwork for sustained human operations on the Moon.
A separate impact occurred on August 5, when the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket smacked into the face of our natural satellite at an estimated 5,400 miles an hour—several times the speed of sound. On January 15, 2025, a Falcon 9 rocket launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center carrying a pair of commercial lunar landers.
On August 11 and 12 NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spotted the crater and snapped pictures from around 60 miles above the lunar surface. Based on these new photos by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the fresh crater appears to be 60 feet across and less than 10 feet deep, according to scientists. In the images, bright rays can be seen emanating from the crater’s rim—these are likely material from deep below the surface, blasted up by the rocket fragment as it hit the moon. Dark and bright rays are visible emanating from the crash site, where the brighter rays and splotch above the crater is fresher material that was excavated from deeper below the surface.
As commercial and governmental activity scales up across the lunar surface, researchers continue utilizing LRO’s precision observations to monitor and assess the dynamic realities of the lunar landscape.