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  • Hacker News
  • > The impactor would have caused a luminous explosion comparable to one made by 15,500 tons of TNT.

    The crater is small enough that it is probably not obvious to spot visually.

    But I'm surprised that we missed noticing an impact event of that size when it happened, or even the space object that caused it.

    by devsda
  • The article says a new crater this size is expected about once every 132 years. Presumably, smaller craters are more frequent. So what's the approximate size of the largest crater that you'd expect, say, in an average year? And would it be scientifically useful to design a mission around sending a rover to explore one of those brand-new craters?
    by teraflop
  • In some more enlightened timeline there's a spirited competition between institutional and amateur astronomers towards predicting these, and some amateur is sitting on a $10M this-person-told-us-so-and-we-bet-against-them prize, which gets bigger every year (no prizes for the institutional side, they get a salary).

    In that timeline's future we're then competing over who can most reliably prevent them.

    The winners of such frivolous competitions over protecting the moon get funding for the more serious job of protecting Earth.

    by __MatrixMan__
  • https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/21/science/space/what-a-mass...
    by bookofjoe
  • Basically, moon bases need to be underground to prevent micrometeoroids from messing them up, and any bigger impact like this is going to wipe out anything we build, even underground.

    All the more reason Earth is pretty awesome!

    Fun fact: moon regolith is made of ~45% oxygen, so in a roundabout way digging underground is kind of like having an atmosphere.

    by npunt
  • NASA

    free to view, you already paid for it

    https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/moon/nasas-moon-orbite...

    by metalman
  • Archive: https://archive.ph/88rlJ
    by JKCalhoun
  • > a whopping 728 feet across, more than twice the length of an American football field

    For the rest of the world, this is ~222 meters, more than twice the length of a 100 meter track.

    EDIT: Ninja'd! :-)

    by Kirr

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