A crater 222 meters wide formed on the moon just two years ago — a once-in-132-years impact

The lunar surface is widely regarded as a time capsule, preserving the scars of ancient collisions with no air or water to erode them. The mottled patterns we see on the moon are mostly impact craters formed billions of years ago.

Now, research has found that a crater 222 meters in diameter formed on the moon just two years ago — the largest crater in the solar system observed both before and after its formation.

New craters appearing on the moon are not unusual. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been photographing the entire lunar surface every month since 2010, comparing images to identify newly formed craters. However, the largest found until now was a 70-meter-wide crater that formed in 2012.

A research team led by Mark Robinson of Intuitive Machines published findings in Science Advances, Vol. 12, No. 38, analyzing a new crater that formed on the moon in the spring of 2024.

The team discovered the crater in the fall of 2025 while comparing monthly photographs taken by the orbiter. The impact is estimated to have occurred in 2024, caused by a small fragment from an asteroid or comet.

The crater measures 222 meters in diameter and 43 meters deep — slightly longer than two soccer fields placed end to end. Its rim rises about 7.7 meters above the surrounding terrain.

Estimating the impact energy based on the assumed density and velocity of the impactor, the team calculated it was equivalent to roughly 15,000 tons of TNT — 27 times the energy that produced the 70-meter crater formed in 2012.

According to existing calculation models, an impact of this scale occurs on the moon roughly once every 132 years. The team said it was an observation most people would be lucky to witness once in a lifetime.

The crater formed on the edge of Mare Crisium on the near side of the moon. Lunar maria are not bodies of water but dark plains of solidified basalt. This crater straddles the boundary where that dark plain meets the brighter highlands.

Because the impact struck at this boundary, the crater is not a perfect circle. The western half spans 230 meters while the eastern half measures 214 meters, making the western side noticeably wider.

The impact erased most of the smaller craters that had previously existed in the area. Of 103 craters measuring 6 to 12 meters in diameter within the heavily debris-covered zone surrounding the new crater, only five survived.

The effects of the impact extended well beyond the crater itself.

The team stacked and compared 540 images of the same location taken before the impact and 60 images taken afterward.

The comparison showed that the surface brightened within 15 kilometers of the crater, while faint darkening was detected more than 100 kilometers beyond that. The team concluded that tiny particles ejected at extremely high velocity at the moment of impact traveled great distances and disturbed the surface soil.

The team said that precisely modeling the early stages of the impact would help researchers better understand the processes that unfold immediately after a collision — dynamics that have not been well characterized until now.

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aeh7812

M.S. Robinson, A.K. Boyd, P. Mahanti, M.R. Manheim, E.J. Speyerer, J.D. Stopar, & R.V. Wagner, A new 222-m diameter lunar crater, Sci. Adv. 12 (2026) eaeh7812.