By This Hour Science Desk
NASA says its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has identified a newly formed crater on the Moon that is unusually large for an event witnessed only through before-and-after orbital observations. The feature, officially named McGetchin, is reported to have formed on the lunar eastern edge during a six-week period in spring 2024, then emerged from image comparisons more than a year later.
The reported find matters less because the Moon has acquired another crater than because of the scale and reach NASA attributes to the impact. McGetchin is said to be about 728 feet wide and 141 feet deep, while disturbed material around it appears to have altered nighttime temperatures across an area roughly four miles wide. NASA describes the impact as the kind expected about once in a century, or potentially less often, on the Moon.
That characterization calls for care. “Once-in-a-century” is a shorthand for a scientific estimate, not a precise calendar schedule. NASA’s account describes impacts of this magnitude as occurring about once every century or over a longer interval. Those descriptions point to the same broad conclusion—an infrequent event—but do not establish that exactly one comparable impact occurs in each 100-year period.
An impact bracketed between April and May 2024
NASA places the formation of McGetchin between April 11 and May 22, 2024. The agency says a comet or asteroid struck the surface, though the supplied account does not establish which kind of object it was. It gives an estimated size range comparable to a three- to six-story building. The impact is said to have excavated the crater and spread altered material beyond its rim.
The name honors lunar scientist Tom McGetchin, NASA says. The designation distinguishes the feature from the Moon’s vast population of older scars, whose formation dates are generally much harder to constrain. In this case, repeated orbital coverage allowed investigators to narrow the formation window by identifying when the feature was absent and when it was present.
NASA’s reported dimensions convey a substantial local excavation without making McGetchin a giant feature in the context of lunar geography. A 728-foot-wide crater is small beside the Moon’s ancient basins and major named craters. Its scientific interest comes from its freshness, its documented appearance between observations, and the pronounced signature it reportedly left in both visible-light and thermal measurements.
The agency has described McGetchin as the largest newly formed crater yet found in the solar system. That is a sweeping comparative claim and depends on the available record of detected, dated impacts rather than a complete inventory of every recent impact across every planetary body. The supplied material does not provide the underlying comparison or define the search boundaries, so the claim should be read as NASA’s reported assessment, not as an independently established solar-system census.
A routine image check became a targeted search
NASA says Robert Wagner first noticed the site on Oct. 24, 2025, during a data-quality check involving imagery from the orbiter’s Wide-Angle Camera. He compared global views of the lunar surface acquired at different times with software intended to flag places where the images changed. The approach is designed to separate stable terrain from potential new features, but it also produces apparent changes caused by shifting illumination and shadows.
That limitation makes human review central to the reported workflow. A bright mark surrounded by a darker halo caught Wagner’s attention. NASA attributes the pattern not to the crater opening alone but to material thrown outward by the impact. In a broad, moderate-resolution map, that ejecta pattern could provide a more conspicuous first sign than the hole itself.
Wide-Angle Camera images cover extensive territory, allowing researchers to compare much of the Moon rather than only a small preselected region. NASA says the global mapping exercise involved combining hundreds of frames and comparing newer maps with older versions. That scale is useful for finding uncommon large changes, but it also means that software can flag visual differences that have no geological cause.
Once the candidate was identified, the team used the orbiter’s Narrow-Angle Camera for a closer look. NASA says those follow-up images established the crater’s reported size and shape and showed effects on nearby terrain. The narrower camera offers sharper views than the broad survey imagery, enabling the change detected in a global comparison to be evaluated as a specific impact feature.
The sequence illustrates why long-running orbital records are valuable. The impact itself was not described as being directly observed. Instead, its timing and consequences were reconstructed from images and thermal observations collected before and after formation. The strength of that method rests on repeat coverage and on the ability to compare instruments that answer different questions about the surface.
A nighttime cold spot reaches far beyond the rim
NASA says observations from Diviner, LRO’s thermal instrument, revealed a cooler zone surrounding McGetchin. The agency places the affected area at roughly four miles across and says it is about 16 degrees Fahrenheit cooler at night than nearby ground. That signature is much wider than the crater itself, indicating that the physical effects NASA associates with the impact extend well beyond the excavated cavity.
The supplied explanation is that the collision loosened, or fluffed up, the lunar regolith around the crater. Regolith is the layer of fragmented material that covers much of the Moon’s surface. If that material becomes less dense, it holds heat less effectively after lunar sunset. NASA says that reduced heat retention accounts for the cooler nighttime readings.
Thermal evidence adds another way to trace an impact’s footprint. A visible image can show the crater and bright or dark patterns in disturbed surface material. Temperature measurements can indicate that the texture or density of that material differs from its surroundings. Neither observation alone describes every detail of the impact, but together they support NASA’s account of a collision that modified ground properties over a broader zone.
NASA says such changes could matter for how rover wheels interact with the surface. The source material does not quantify a hazard, specify a location relevant to a planned mission, or show that McGetchin creates a practical obstacle for exploration. The implication is narrower: fresh impacts can leave terrain unlike adjacent ground, and orbital observations can help identify that difference.
The cold spot also frames the discovery as a study of an active lunar environment. The Moon lacks an atmosphere that would burn up or substantially slow incoming objects before they reach the ground. Most impacts are much smaller than the one believed to have made McGetchin. NASA says the smallest craters reliably distinguished in LRO imagery are about 30 feet wide, and that impacts at that scale generate an estimated 140 new craters across the Moon in a year.
Seventeen years of repeat observations set the context
LRO has orbited the Moon for more than 17 years, NASA says, using seven instruments to map topography, composition, temperature and the radiation environment. Over that period, its team has identified at least 1,000 new impact craters and flagged about 100,000 further surface changes associated either with incoming objects or with debris ejected by impacts.
Those figures put McGetchin in a larger record of continual surface change. They also clarify why a striking discovery can arise from work that begins as a quality-control exercise. Orbital monitoring is not confined to searching for headline-making craters. It generates repeated records that can reveal features ranging from relatively small fresh impacts to other changes in the landscape.
NASA says the team periodically conducts global searches for features wider than 150 feet, complementing more localized examination of sharper Narrow-Angle Camera images. The combination reflects a practical division of labor: broad imagery makes wide-area comparisons possible, while more detailed imaging tests whether an apparent change has the form and context expected of a crater.
According to the supplied account, researchers reported results in a pair of papers in Science Advances. The chronology is not fully clear. NASA’s page refers to scientists reporting the discovery on a Wednesday, while other portions cite Sept. 15, 2026, for the pair of papers and Sept. 16, 2026, for a thermal-instrument paper. The context does not resolve whether the articles appeared on separate dates, were reported on different dates, or were being described through different publication milestones.
That ambiguity does not change the basic sequence NASA presents: an impact occurred in 2024; a broad-image comparison identified the unusual mark in October 2025; sharper imagery and thermal measurements followed; and the findings were later described in scientific papers. But it does limit precision about when each result entered the public scientific record.
The report has not been independently corroborated for this article. All factual claims here, including the crater’s dimensions, age window, temperature anomaly, impact frequency estimate and superlative comparison, derive from the supplied NASA account. Independent examination of the imagery, analysis and cited papers would be needed to assess those conclusions beyond NASA’s description.
For further context on this subject, see NASA Seeks Proposals for Lunar Surface Power, Oxygen and Manufacturing.
Reporting notes
What is confirmed: NASA reports a 728-foot-wide, 141-foot-deep crater identified through wide- and narrow-angle imaging, with thermal follow-up.
Why this matters: The reported crater and surrounding cold spot offer a rare record of how a large recent impact changes lunar terrain.
What remains unclear: The impactor’s exact nature and the publication timing of the reported papers are not clear in the supplied context. This report is based on one source and has not been independently corroborated.
