# Moon Receives Largest Recent Impact Crater Found in Solar System
Robert Wagner, an image-processing specialist at Intuitive Machines, discovered the crater while analyzing NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images. Two studies published September 16 in the journal Science Advances describe the feature and document changes to the lunar surface surrounding it.
Robert Wagner, an image-processing specialist at aerospace company Intuitive Machines, first noticed the crater in October 2025 when reviewing photographs from the orbiter's camera system. He spotted a large bright spot encircled by a dark halo, a composition indicating disrupted surface material. Wagner said the find stood out immediately: "It was by far the most obvious impact debris pattern I've ever seen in one of these images."
Comparing before-and-after images of the region, Wagner's team determined the crater appeared on the moon's eastern edge sometime between April 11 and May 22, 2024. The resulting divot measures 728 feet wide—just over the length of two football fields placed end-to-end—and reaches 141 feet deep, sufficient to hold three school buses stacked vertically.
Wagner and colleagues estimate an asteroid or comet roughly the size of a three- to six-story building created the feature upon impact. Such events occur approximately once every 132 years, according to their calculations. The research team named the formation McGetchin crater after Tom McGetchin, a pioneering lunar scientist who died in 1979.
Tyler Powell, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory who co-authored the second study, noted the timing: "A crater of this size is expected to form on the moon only once per century, so we're extremely lucky it formed during the lifetime of the LRO mission and that we are able to observe the region both before and after impact."
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter launched in 2009 and has spent almost two decades collecting data on the moon's topography, surface composition, temperature and radiation environment. Following Wagner's initial discovery, researchers conducted additional observations using the orbiter's thermal instrument, Diviner. These measurements revealed a four-mile-wide area around McGetchin crater that registers approximately 16 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than surrounding regions at night.
Powell and colleagues attribute the lower temperature to the impact's effect on regolith—moon dirt. The collision fluffed up the material, reducing its density and capacity to retain heat. Wagner's team also documented that ejected material disturbed the lunar surface more than 75 miles from the crater itself.
The extensive reach of both the debris field and the cooler temperature zone demonstrates the wide-ranging effects of incoming space rocks. Powell explained the significance: "If we're trying to send rovers or astronauts or build things on the moon, we want to understand the properties of the surface."
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Robinson, Wagner and colleagues wrote in their study that the 2024 impact creating McGetchin crater "constitutes a statistically rare, effectively once-in-a-lifetime observation."
**Sources:**
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-moon-just-got-a-massive-new-crater-thats-wider-than-two-end-to-end-football-fields-its-a-once-in-a-lifetime-observation-180989526/