A New Crater on the Moon

Something the size of the Dome Planetarium must have crashed into the Moon sometime between April 11 and May 22, 2024, because a photo taken on May 22, 2024, by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) reveals a 728-foot-wide crater that is completely absent in the photo from April 11, 2024, of the same area.

While scientists have uncovered more than 1,000 small new craters on the Moon since LRO entered orbit in 2009, this one is easily the biggest (the next biggest is 230 feet across).

In fact, it’s the biggest new crater humans have seen across the entire Solar System (NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has also photographed over 1,000 small new craters that have formed on the Red Planet since entering orbit in 2006, including one nearly 500 feet across).

Here on Earth, a slightly larger impactor exploded in the atmosphere above Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013.

In other space news, ESA’s Juice spacecraft is scheduled to fly by Earth on Monday, September 28, 2026, for a gravity assist. It previously flew past Venus in 2025 and Earth in 2024, after launching in 2023. One more gravity assist from our planet in 2029 will give it enough oomph to finally reach Jupiter in 2031.

And SpaceX is currently planning to launch the next crew of astronauts to the International Space Station aboard their Dragon spacecraft on Thursday, October 1, 2026, at 10:10 a.m. (Central). You can watch the launch livestreamed on NASA’s website, nasa.gov.