BEFORE
Posted on 09/23/2026 11:43:06 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Explanation: A once-in-a-lifetime crater has appeared on the Moon! A comet or asteroid roughly the size of a humpback whale (approximately 10-20 meters, 30-60 feet) crashed into the Moon sometime between April and May of 2024. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), with its monthly monitoring of the Moon, captured today’s images of the lunar surface before and after the event. The resulting crater, named after Apollo-era lunar scientist McGetchin, is two soccer fields across. Craters of this size are only expected once every 132 years! Follow up thermal imaging revealed a large cold spot that surrounds the warm crater. Surface impacts will puff up the loose lunar sediment, or regolith, making it less dense and harder to retain heat. This event affected an area much larger than the visible crater, which will inform humanity’s understanding of surface impacts and the evolution of the Moon’s surface. It also reminds us all to be thankful for Earth's atmosphere.
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Did it say “Oh no, not again...” just before impact?
Wow.
Whoa.
I love how NASA feels it is so necessary to emphasize facts! That's really cool that they do that! I wouldn't have known that statistics could be so very exciting!
The moon is America's so it should be "two football fields across."
Good thing it didn’t hit Uranus!..................
Moon Station Zero has been blown up by a Chinese-trained whale.
Be glad it hit the Moon and not Earth! That would have ruined many a person’s day if it had hit here. (The ocean wave from such a hit would have been devastating!)
” . . .roughly the size of a humpback whale (approximately 10-20 meters, 30-60 feet) crashed into the Moon”
Paging Ford Prefect!
The eye of Sauron!
Pretty cool!
"Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.” - Douglas Adams
I stand corrected...
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