As scientists were combing through reams of data collected by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, they spotted something incredibly rare. Or, rather, something that we can see all the time just by looking up at the moon at night, but new occurrences of it are incredibly rare—they spotted some fresh moon craters.
Logic dictates that if the moon had been slammed into by a space rock big enough to leave an imprint noticeable by satellite imagery, we would’ve noticed it sooner. But the truth is, it’s hard to keep track of every square inch of the moon, and there are a lot of craters on it as is. New ones don’t necessarily stick out any more than the old ones unless you have a keen eye and know what to look for.
As reported by Science News, the researchers identified a fresh impact crater on the Moon measuring about 225 meters across, roughly the length of two football fields. The crater likely first appeared between April and May 2024, meaning it’s fairly recent and statistically rare—so rare that, based on existing models, an impact of this size is only expected to happen once every 139 years.
Scientists Just Realized the Moon Got a New Crater Last Year
Presented by planetary scientist Mark Robinson at the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference, the find is both spectacular and a bit unnerving. A sizable rock struck the moon, and no one noticed the resulting crater for years. And, before that, no one saw the rock coming.
The crater’s steep walls and 43-meter depth indicate it struck solid, hardened material, while its slightly stretched shape hints that the subsurface isn’t uniform. This means that even the Moon’s ground can be structurally unpredictable when it gets hit by a very hard, fast thing.
Another concerning bit is that the meteor didn’t stay in the crater. The impact blasted rock and dust debris across a wide area, with disturbances detected as far as 120 kilometers away. This debris travels at extreme speeds, turning tiny fragments into high-velocity bullets.
While there is some concern about not detecting potentially destructive meteors, there is even greater concern for lunar missions. With the US and China both trying to put boots on the moon again for the first time in decades, there is the possibility that they can, of course, be directly hit by a meteor. There’s also the fear that they could be sandblasted by invisible, fast-moving debris from an impact dozens of miles away.
Just because it’s a rare phenomenon doesn’t mean it can’t or won’t happen again. If you’re going to put people on the moon, or even establish moon bases and colonies, protecting them from direct meteor hits or shrapnel should be a top priority.
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