# NASA finds the Moon's biggest new crater in 17 years, 222 metres wide Source: Searchable (https://searchable.pk/news/science/nasa-finds-the-moons-biggest-new-crater-in-17-years-222-metres-wide) Type: News article Author: Searchable Editorial Published: 17 Sept 2026 Updated: 17 Sept 2026 Retrieved: 18 Sept 2026 > The McGetchin impact site opened up between April and May 2024. Craters this size form on the Moon roughly once every 132 years. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has picked up the largest fresh impact crater found in its 17 years of mapping the Moon. It is about 222 metres (728 feet) across and 43 metres (141 feet) deep. You could drop the Colosseum into it. ## What was found The crater sits near the eastern edge of the Moon's near side, close to the older crater McGetchin, named after the lunar geologist Tom McGetchin. Robert Wagner, an image-processing specialist at Intuitive Machines, spotted it by noticing the unusually large blast area around it in images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. Comparing before and after frames narrowed the impact to a window between 11 April and 22 May 2024. The object that hit was roughly the size of a three to six storey building, either an asteroid or a comet fragment. ## Why 132 years matters Crater production models say an impact big enough to leave a 222 metre hole happens on the Moon about once every 132 years. Catching one inside a 17-year observation window is luck, and it is the kind of luck that gives scientists a rare directly dated impact to work from. ## The cold spot is the interesting part The impact left a thermal signature 6.4 km wide, far larger than the crater itself. Inside that zone, surface temperatures during the lunar night run about 16 degrees Fahrenheit colder than the ground around it. The reason is that the blast compacted the loose lunar soil. Denser soil holds heat differently. That is not a curiosity. It bears directly on where landers can safely set down, how rovers cope with changed surface strength, and what foundations would need to look like for anything built on the Moon. ## The Pakistani connection Pakistan has a small but real stake in lunar science. The ICUBE-Qamar cubesat, developed by the Institute of Space Technology in Islamabad with China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University and SUPARCO, launched aboard China's Chang'e-6 mission in May 2024 and returned images from lunar orbit. That was the same period in which this crater formed. Lunar surface data of this kind feeds into mission planning for everyone flying to the Moon, including the Chinese programme that Pakistani payloads have been riding on. ## Where to see it The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera archive is public. NASA and Arizona State University publish the before-and-after image pairs, which is how amateur observers have found smaller impacts in the same dataset over the years. For readers following what else is going up, our story on [Starlink's licensing position in Pakistan](/news/technology/starlink-in-pakistan-1-of-4-launch-requirements-met-no-pta-licence-request-yet) covers the nearer-orbit side of the same industry. ## Frequently asked questions **How big is the new Moon crater NASA found?** About 222 metres (728 feet) wide and 43 metres (141 feet) deep. It formed between 11 April and 22 May 2024 and is the largest new impact crater found in the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's 17 years of mapping. ## Sources - Massive new crater discovered on Moon by NASA's LRO (ARY News): https://arynews.tv/massive-new-crater-discovered-on-moon-by-nasas-lro/ How to cite: "NASA finds the Moon's biggest new crater in 17 years, 222 metres wide", Searchable, 17 Sept 2026, https://searchable.pk/news/science/nasa-finds-the-moons-biggest-new-crater-in-17-years-222-metres-wide