NASA Spacecraft Spots Moon Crater Bigger Than the Roman Colosseum

A rock from space struck the moon without warning, creating a crater that a spacecraft has now recorded. That crater measures larger than the Roman Colosseum.

The steep-sided hole spans roughly two football fields in width and reaches up to three vertically stacked yellow school buses in depth, a measurement that NASA provides. At about 728 feet across and 141 feet deep, it is the largest known impact crater formed recently anywhere in the solar system.

The crater — named for the late Thomas McGetchin, a former director of Houston’s Lunar and Planetary Institute — is three times bigger than the previous record-holder found by the LRO a decade ago. It sits on the moon’s near side, where the ground has been pockmarked since ancient times.

The Rock That Made It

A fragment of an asteroid or comet, roughly the size of a three- to six-story building, struck the lunar surface at some point between April 11 and May 22, 2024. The resulting crater went undetected by telescopes both on Earth and in orbit at the time it happened.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter first caught sight of the newly made crater soon after its formation, though the wide-angle images went unnoticed in the flood of data until August 2025. The spacecraft then returned for more precise pictures last fall, with confirmation of the find following early this year.

A Once-In-A-Lifetime Observation

Such a large-scale event is estimated to happen only once every 132 years, according to researchers. The occasion has been called a treasure trove of information as NASA prepares to build a base for astronauts on the moon.

In one of the two studies published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, the researchers noted “This event constitutes a statistically rare, effectively once-in-a-lifetime observation,”.

What The Strike Churned Up

The blast stirred up the Moon’s surface across a large region, tossing dust and rocky soil high into the sky at a greater angle than researchers had anticipated. Mark Robinson, the lead researcher on the LRO’s cameras and an employee at Intuitive Machines, explained what happened.

Another study found a 4-mile-wide cold zone surrounding the new crater, matching what would happen if the moon’s surface layer had been stirred up. The lead author, David Paige of the University of California, Los Angeles, draws a comparison to gardening.

“We’re now thinking of impacts as a way to garden the regolith — churning the sediments and putting stuff above that’s usually below the surface,” Paige said in a statement.

The Orbiter’s Long Record

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has circled the moon since 2009, giving scientists a close-up view of the lunar surface as the space agency prepares to send astronauts back. The LRO’s crater discoveries since launch show that the moon’s top inch of soil is being overturned by ejected material every 80,000 years, according to Robinson.

That overturning happens faster than previously thought.

The Footprints Will Not Last

Robinson said in an email that contrary to the popular belief that the Apollo moonwalkers’ dusty lunar footprints will last forever, they will “definitely be long gone in that time frame,”.

The next step is to calculate the risk of ejected crater material striking NASA’s planned moon base. “That information will help engineers harden structures so one won’t have to worry about damage, or maybe worry less,” he added.

The Numbers Behind The Find

Here is how the crater compares to what came before:

1. The McGetchin crater is 728 feet across, the length of two football fields.
2. It is up to 141 feet deep, three vertically stacked yellow school buses.
3. It is three times bigger than the previous record-holder found a decade ago.
4. Such an event occurs only once every 132 years.

The Big Picture On The Moon

Among the solar system’s largest impact craters, some rest upon the moon. One spans more than 1,500 miles across. The McGetchin crater falls short of those ancient marks, yet it is newer — and it was caught while still forming.

The team behind Paige’s work explains that the soil around the crater is loose because of the impact.

The science is just beginning.

See the video the story is built around at Cbsnews.

astronomy · crater · moon · NASA · spacecraft