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2026-09-18 Science & Technology

NASA has discovered the largest modern impact crater on the Moon

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Posted by badanov 2026-09-18 00:00|| E-Mail|| Front Page|| [179 views ] Top

1 NASA’s Moon Orbiter Spots New, ‘Once-in-Century’ Moon Crater

It started as a routine data-quality check. But as Robert Wagner, a scientist with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), scanned a giant Moon map on his computer screen, an unusually large bright spot circled by a dark halo caught his eye, as it implied that surface material in that area had been shaken up.

“I just stopped, dropped everything, and started looking into what that spot was,” said Wagner, an image-processing specialist from Intuitive Machines who works with data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) system.

By comparing before and after images of the Moon, Wagner realized he had discovered the largest, newly formed crater ever found in the solar system, as scientists reported Wednesday in Science Advances. This discovery highlights the value of NASA’s Moon orbiter data in studying a dynamic landscape as the agency advances a sustained human presence and expanded scientific and commercial activity on the Moon.

Posted by Skidmark 2026-09-18 11:44|| 2026-09-18 11:44|| Front Page Top

Posted by swksvolFF 2026-09-18 16:40|| 2026-09-18 16:40|| Front Page Top

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