In the quiet discipline of comparing lunar photographs, a single bright anomaly on the moon's eastern edge led scientist Robert Wagner to a discovery that reframes our understanding of cosmic time: the largest newly formed crater in the solar system, born between April and May of 2024. Named McGetchin Crater in honor of a pioneering lunar scientist, the 728-foot-wide, 141-foot-deep scar is a reminder that the universe continues to reshape the worlds around us, often without witness — until someone stops and looks closely enough.
NASA discovers largest newly formed lunar crater from recent comet impact
He stopped, abandoned everything, and started investigating
Mark
So Wagner was just looking at routine images when he spotted this? It wasn't like they were searching for a new crater specifically?
Mimi
Exactly. He was comparing 2024 images against earlier photographs, looking for any changes at all. The bright spot just stood out to him—something about how it looked told him the surface had been disturbed.
Luke
Do we know what made him stop? Was it training, intuition, or just luck?
Mimi
The NASA report says he saw an "unusually large bright spot" and recognized it as an area that had been "shaken up." But the source doesn't explain his exact reasoning—just that he recognized it meant something.
Mark
And the crater itself—728 feet wide, 141 feet deep. Those are specific measurements. How confident are we in those numbers?
Mimi
NASA published them in Science Advances this week, so they've been through peer review. The orbiter's instruments are precise enough to measure that accurately.
Luke
But the timing—April 11 to May 22, 2024—that's a window, not a specific date. They can't pinpoint the exact moment?
Mimi
Right. The crater had to have formed sometime in that range based on comparing images, but they can't narrow it down further than that.
Mark
Why name it after McGetchin specifically?
Mimi
He was a pioneering lunar scientist and directed the Lunar and Planetary Institute. It's how the scientific community honors significant discoveries.
Luke
The orbiter has been running since 2009—that's 17 years of continuous data. How many other craters might have formed in that time that we just haven't noticed yet?
Mimi
That's the unsettling part. We don't know. This one was spotted because Wagner happened to be looking at the right images at the right time.
Le Pouls
- A routine scan of lunar imagery became extraordinary when an unusually bright spot on the moon's eastern edge refused to be ignored.
- The crater — wide enough to swallow two football fields and deep enough to stack three school buses — was carved by a building-sized comet or asteroid in a matter of seconds sometime in spring 2024.
- Because the moon has no atmosphere or weathering, the impact left a pristine, permanent record that will endure for millions of years, making it both a scientific gift and a sobering measure of cosmic force.
- NASA confirmed the discovery in the journal Science Advances, officially naming the crater McGetchin after a pioneering lunar scientist and cementing its place as the largest newly formed crater documented anywhere in the solar system.
- The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter — humanity's longest-lived lunar mission, circling since 2009 — continues its patient vigil, ensuring that the next such event will not go unseen.
In the quiet discipline of comparing lunar photographs, a single bright anomaly on the moon's eastern edge led scientist Robert Wagner to a discovery that reframes our understanding of cosmic time: the largest newly formed crater in the solar system, born between April and May of 2024. Named McGetchin Crater in honor of a pioneering lunar scientist, the 728-foot-wide, 141-foot-deep scar is a reminder that the universe continues to reshape the worlds around us, often without witness — until someone stops and looks closely enough.
Robert Wagner had compared lunar photographs hundreds of times before. But one day, scanning images captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2024, something made him stop: an unusually bright spot on the moon's eastern edge. Wagner, an image-processing specialist analyzing data from the orbiter's camera system, set aside everything else and began to investigate.
What he found was staggering. A crater 728 feet wide — the span of two football fields — and 141 feet deep had appeared on the lunar surface. Comparing the new images against earlier maps, the conclusion was clear: the impact had occurred between April 11 and May 22, 2024, making this the largest crater formed anywhere in the solar system in recent memory. The object responsible was roughly the size of a three- to six-story building, a comet or asteroid whose speed made its dimensions almost beside the point.
The moon, lacking any atmosphere to slow incoming objects or weather to erode their marks, preserves such collisions perfectly. This scar will remain visible for millions of years. NASA published the findings in Science Advances this week, and the crater has been officially named McGetchin Crater, honoring Tom McGetchin, a pioneering lunar scientist and former director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute.
The discovery was made possible by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a modest but precise spacecraft that has circled the moon since 2009 — now the longest-lived lunar orbiting mission in history. Its instruments measure temperature, radiation, and surface composition, but it was the camera system, and one scientist's willingness to pause over a bright spot, that revealed the cosmos had quietly left its largest recent mark.
Robert Wagner was doing what he had done hundreds of times before—scanning lunar photographs on his computer screen, comparing images the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter had captured in 2024 against earlier baseline maps. He was looking for changes, for anything the moon's surface had done in the years since the last detailed survey. Then something stopped him. A bright spot, unusually bright, caught his eye on the eastern edge of the moon. It was the kind of thing that might mean nothing. It might mean everything. Wagner, an image-processing specialist who works for Intuitive Machines and analyzes data from the orbiter's camera system, did what the moment demanded: he stopped, abandoned whatever else was on his desk, and began investigating.
What he found was a crater 728 feet across—wide enough to span the length of two football fields laid end to end. The depth was 141 feet, deep enough that three yellow school buses stacked vertically would fit inside it with room to spare. The crater was new. Not ancient. Not millions of years old. The impact that created it had occurred sometime between April 11 and May 22, 2024, on the moon's eastern edge. When Wagner compared his images with photographs taken earlier, the evidence was unmistakable: this was the largest crater formed anywhere in the solar system in recent memory, and no one had documented it until he saw that bright spot on his screen.
The object that made the crater was roughly the size of a three- to six-story building—a comet or asteroid traveling at speeds that made size almost irrelevant. The moon, with no atmosphere to slow incoming objects and no weathering to erase the scars, keeps a perfect record of such collisions. This one left a mark that would remain visible for millions of years. NASA scientists published their findings this week in the journal Science Advances, confirming Wagner's discovery and its significance.
The crater has been officially named McGetchin Crater, honoring Tom McGetchin, a pioneering lunar scientist who served as director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute. The naming reflects the scientific community's recognition that this discovery matters—that it adds to our understanding of how the moon continues to be shaped by the cosmos around it.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the spacecraft that made the discovery possible, has been in orbit since 2009. It is now the longest-lived lunar orbiting mission in history. The orbiter itself is a modest machine—roughly rectangular, about 13 feet long, 9 feet wide, and 9 feet tall, weighing just over one ton. But its instruments are precise. Beyond the camera system that captured the images Wagner was studying, the orbiter measures surface temperature, radiation levels, and composition data. It has become humanity's most persistent eye on the moon, watching for changes, recording details, waiting for moments like the one Wagner experienced when he noticed something that had not been there before.
Citations marquantes
I just stopped, dropped everything, and started looking into what that spot was— Robert Wagner, NASA image-processing specialist
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