Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

So this is a 222-meter impact crater that we know formed in spring 2024.

Um, and it was discovered in these repeat images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, um, and basically change detection between, uh, images before and after have revealed, uh, many craters like this that are much smaller, but this one is by far the largest.

The next largest that we've observed is, um, less than a third the size at about 70 meters.

Something of this size is expected to form once every maybe 130 years, so, uh, it's extremely rare.

I think one of the things that's most interesting about one of these pristine craters is that we're able to tease out these super faint, um, changes to the surface that the crater has caused.

So we've looked at this with a diviner, uh, instrument.

This is a thermal instrument on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the same, uh, orbiter as the camera.

Uh, it measures the surface temperatures during the day but also at night.

An impact this big is expected only about once every century.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed the area, but scientists didn't notice the crater until they compared newer pictures with older ones.

The crater has now been named McGetchin Crater, after lunar scientist Thomas McGetchin, and scientists say studying this fresh crater could help them better understand what happens when giant space rocks smash into the Moon.

Now, it's time for the first-ever Word of the Day.

And while we're talking about the moon, astronomers just found evidence that our nearest neighbor changed rather dramatically while no one was looking.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has discovered a new impact crater that formed sometime between April 11th and May 22nd of 2024.

It's been officially named McGetchin Crater, and it's not a little divot.

The crater measures about 728 feet across, and it's about 141 feet deep.

the guy from Intuit machines is on the NRO committee that helped find it.

The story there is that Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter does, you know, covers the circles, sun-synchronous orbit around the moon regularly, and it takes pictures.

And what the science team found is that sometime, I don't remember the last year, or maybe it was this year in the spring, uh a crater appeared on the moon uh that was actually one of the largest new impact craters we've seen it was about uh was it 223 feet across about uh what is it a football field sizes approximately That's cool.

I mean, it's a new crater that's somewhat large.

But apparently on the far side, Earth-based telescopes and real-time monitoring systems I can't observe what goes on.

But they've got this thing called a Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and they were able to look at footage after the event.

I guess the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is NASA's version of a DVR.

But, again, shouldn't we be more concerned that, A, this happened, and, B, they didn't know it was occurring? I mean, could it have hit us? If we get close to Armageddon, remember, Bruce Willis is no longer available to save us.

We don't even have Aerosmith anymore because Steven Tyler lost his voice.

Actually, more like a violent collision.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted this enormous new crater created by an asteroid or comet fragment that slammed into the lunar surface.

They estimate it was about the size of a five-story building, leaving a crater 43 meters deep, 222 meters wide.

That's more than two football fields across.