Scientists have identified a massive new crater on the moon, the result of a powerful asteroid or comet impact that struck sometime between April and May of 2024 and went completely unnoticed at the time. Named McGetchin, the crater spans roughly 728 feet across and plunges 141 feet deep, making it the largest crater of its kind ever documented anywhere in the solar system since scientists began tracking such impacts.

The discovery came almost by accident. Robert Wagner, a scientist working with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, spotted the feature in October 2025 while running a routine check on the spacecraft’s imagery. Follow-up observations confirmed just how unusual the find was: an impact of this magnitude is thought to strike the moon only about once every century or so. Two studies detailing the discovery were published this month in the journal Science Advances.

Beyond its size, McGetchin gives researchers a rare opportunity — a chance to study a lunar impact site before weathering and time have erased the finer details. Scientists tracked material blasted outward from the crater across a wide swath of the surrounding surface, along with an unusual pocket of cooler temperatures nearby, offering fresh clues about how quickly loose material shifts and resettles on the moon after a strike like this.

The findings could have practical value, too: NASA is using the crater as a case study while planning its future lunar base, hoping to better understand what risk flying debris from similar impacts might pose to structures built on the surface. The crater takes its name from Thomas McGetchin, who led the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston in the late 1970s and received NASA’s Exceptional Public Service Medal in 1979 for broadening the agency’s research beyond the moon to the solar system at large.