NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Identifies McGetchin, the Largest Known Recent Impact Crater

16 September 2026National

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has identified a new impact crater on the Moon's near side that formed between 11 April and 22 May 2024. Named McGetchin, after Thomas McGetchin of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, it measures about 222 metres across and up to 43 metres deep, making it the largest known recent impact crater in the solar system — roughly three times larger than the previous record holder found by LRO a decade earlier. The impact scattered material over more than 100 km and left a 7-km-wide cold spot. Two studies were published in Science Advances on 15 September 2026.

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NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched in 2009 and continues to map the Moon at high resolution | The Moon is tidally locked to Earth, so the same near side always faces us | Science Advances is an open-access journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

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