What a Massive New Crater Means for Future Moon Bases

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTYou have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.At a whopping 728 feet wide, the newfound basin hints at the risks that impact events may pose to planned human outposts.Listen · 5:31 min A view of the new crater taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on March 3. The crater, 728 feet across, was first spotted in October 2025.Credit...NASA Goddard/Intuitive MachinesSept. 21, 2026We may think of the Moon as a silvery, silent realm. But in truth, it’s a war zone. Asteroids and comet shards slam into it all the time, giving the surface new scars to accompany its wealth of ancient craters.Now, NASA says it has found the largest fresh crater seen on the moon since at least 2009 — a basin so big that the impact that created it can be expected to happen just once every 132 years. Such an event may be a rarity, but the discovery has important implications for humanity’s future in space.While perusing photographs taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, astronomers spotted a previously unseen lunar crater that’s a whopping 728 feet across, more than twice the length of an American football field.“That’s a monster of a crater, at least in modern times,” said Nicholas Schmerr, a planetary geophysicist at the University of Maryland, College Park.By comparing older satellite images to more recent ones, scientists have concluded that an object 30 to 70 feet across plowed into the Moon at a blistering speed sometime in the spring of 2024. The impactor would have caused a luminous explosion comparable to one made by 15,500 tons of TNT.The basin, named McGetchin crater after a lunar scientist, Tom McGetchin, can be found near the edge of the Sea of Crises, a 345-mile-long expanse of frozen lava on the Moon’s eastern edge. Its discovery was reported in two studies published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT