Space · Friday, 18 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

NASA's Moon orbiter found the largest new crater ever seen. A rock hit the Moon in 2024, and nobody noticed for more than a year.

A space rock dug a crater 222 metres wide on the Moon in spring 2024. No telescope saw it, and a NASA scientist found it in routine pictures more than a year later.

222 m

across, the largest new crater ever found in the solar system

The last record for a new crater on the Moon was 70 metres. [2]

1 in 132 years

how often models say a hit this big should strike the Moon

LRO has watched for 17 years and found at least 1,000 smaller new craters. [2][3]

7 km

wide, a patch around the crater that is about 9 C colder at night

The hit fluffed up the soil, so it holds less heat, a second study found. [3][5]

The lead story — what happened

A space rock hit the Moon between 11 April and 22 May 2024. It dug a crater 222 metres wide and 43 metres deep. [1][3]
It is the largest newly formed crater found anywhere in the solar system. The previous record for a new crater on the Moon was 70 metres wide. [2]
The rock was a piece of an asteroid or a comet. NASA says it was possibly the size of a three- to six-storey building. [2][3]
No telescope on Earth or in space saw the hit happen. [4] NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a spacecraft that has circled the Moon since 2009, had photographed the spot before and after. [4]
LRO's wide camera photographs the whole Moon every month. Comparing two months taken under similar sunlight shows what has changed. [2]
Robert Wagner, an image specialist at Intuitive Machines, a Texas space company, noticed a bright patch with a dark ring around it during a routine check of the data. [3]
The pictures were not flagged until August 2025, more than a year after the hit. [4]
Models say a hit this big should strike the Moon about once every 132 years. [2][4]
The crash threw dust and rock more than 100 kilometres across the surface, and at a steeper angle than scientists expected. [4]
A second team found a patch 7 kilometres wide around the crater that is about 9 degrees Celsius colder at night. The hit fluffed up the soil, so it now loses heat faster. [3][5]
The crater sits near the Moon's eastern edge, just inside the rim of a huge old basin called Crisium, where dark lava plains meet brighter highlands. [2][3]
LRO has found at least 1,000 new craters in 17 years. Most are far smaller, and the smallest it can pick out are about 9 metres wide. [3]
The two studies came out on 16 September in the journal Science Advances. [1][4] The crater is named after Thomas McGetchin, a former director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. [4]
The scientists say knowing how far a big hit disturbs the ground will help plan where rovers drive and where astronauts build. [3][5]

Who is involved

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)

a NASA spacecraft that has mapped the Moon since 2009; its cameras photographed the spot before and after the hit
Robert Wagner

an image specialist at Intuitive Machines, a Texas space company, who works on LRO's pictures; he spotted the new crater
Mark Robinson

chief scientist for LRO's cameras, at Intuitive Machines; led the study of the crater and how far its rock flew
Tyler Powell and David Paige

scientists at Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Los Angeles; they measured the cold patch around the crater

How it unfolded

Apr-May 2024 A rock hits the Moon and digs McGetchin crater. [3]
Aug 2025 The new crater is flagged in LRO's pictures. [4]
Late 2025 LRO takes sharper pictures and night-time heat readings of the site. [3][4]
Early 2026 The discovery is confirmed. [4]
16 Sep 2026 Two studies are published in Science Advances. [1][4]

Where this points

The teams now treat McGetchin as a starting point, so the next thing to watch is how fast LRO's pictures show its bright splash and cold patch fading. [5]

What is pushing on the whole day

The bar and the word are our reading of how hard each one is pushing today. The arrow is where it is heading. The evidence is in the stories below.

Finds hiding in old pictures Building↑

NASA's Moon orbiter photographed the new crater in 2024, but nobody flagged it until August 2025. [4] The youngest planet ever found turned up in old images stored by the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. [8]

Models meeting a case they missed Building↑

Planet-building models did not expect a planet younger than a million years. [8] Standard models of the Sun get its inner layers and its lithium slightly wrong, and a swallowed planet is one proposed fix. [11] Crater models say a hit as big as McGetchin should come only once every 132 years. [2]

New telescopes getting ready Steady↑

NASA's Roman telescope turned on its 300-megapixel main camera on 11 September. [10] The team behind the youngest planet expects Roman's starlight-blocking instrument to find more planets like it. [9]

The rest of the day

4 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
Starship's first orbit try moves to 28 September

SpaceX said on 17 September that its first try at flying Starship into orbit moves to 28 September, six days later than planned. [6] It gave no reason. [6] Starship is the giant reusable rocket SpaceX is building for the Moon and Mars. Its 13 earlier flights all stopped just short of orbit. [6] This flight is meant to circle Earth six times about 275 kilometres up, release 26 larger Starlink internet satellites, and come down in the Pacific west of Chile about 10 hours after launch. [6][7]

Why it matters — SpaceX says reaching orbit has to come first before it can start reusing the whole rocket quickly. [6] The booster will again splash into the Gulf of Mexico, after the last one in July had ice clog three engines and hit the water hard. [7]
03
The youngest planet yet, found in old pictures

Astronomers confirmed a planet less than a million years old, the youngest ever found, in a study out on 16 September. [8][9] The planet, Elias 2-24 b, is about as heavy as Jupiter. [9] It sits 450 light-years away, in a gap in the dusty disc around its young star, where earlier telescopes had hinted a planet might be. [9] A team led by Andrea Bernardi, in Chile, found it in old images from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. [8] The youngest planets known before were all over 5 million years old. [8]

Why it matters — Planet-building models already struggled to explain the older record holders, co-author Lucas Cieza said, and this one shows they are missing some steps. [8] The authors expect NASA's Roman telescope, which carries an instrument that blocks out starlight, to find planets like this more easily. [9]
04
Roman's main camera is cold and working

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, launched on 30 August, has turned on its main camera for the first time. [10] The Wide Field Instrument is a 300-megapixel camera for infrared light, the heat glow our eyes cannot see. [10] Engineers first let it dry out for about 10 days. [10] On 11 September they turned off a heater so it could cool to about minus 143 degrees Celsius, cold enough to turn its detectors on. [10] On 13 September the team confirmed the parts that focus it were working. [10]

Why it matters — Roman's second instrument, which blocks a star's light to see its planets, passed its first remote tests and will now spend 30 days letting water and chemicals leave its surfaces. [10] The telescope still has about 12 weeks to go before it reaches its working spot far beyond the Moon, and science starts after another month of tests. [10]
05
The Sun may have swallowed a planet

A study published on 10 September suggests the Sun may have swallowed a planet five to ten times heavier than Earth early in its life. [11] The team, led by Mutlu Yildiz of Ege University in Turkey, ran computer models of how the Sun has aged. [11] Adding a swallowed planet helped explain three things the usual models get slightly wrong. [11] They are how deep the Sun's churning outer layer goes, how fast sound travels just below it, and why its surface holds so little lithium. [11]

Why it matters — Planets a few times heavier than Earth are common around other stars, and our solar system has none, so this would be one reason why. [11] It is still only a model: the authors say something else could explain the gaps, and the next step is to look for the planet's chemical mark inside the Sun. [11]

02 Lesson why it matters

How scientists can say a crater this big comes once every 132 years

Small rocks hit the Moon every year and leave craters that can be counted. Scientists stretch that count to the rare big hit, and McGetchin now tests it.

The twist

Nobody watched the Moon for 132 years to get that figure. It comes from models built on counts of craters, most of them small. McGetchin is the first big new crater that can show whether the pattern holds at the big end.

How it works

Small rocks hit the Moon every year, and each one leaves a crater that can be seen and counted
Small hits are common and big hits are rare, and the counts fall in a steady pattern as the craters get bigger
Scientists stretch that pattern to sizes nobody has watched form
That gives a rate for the rare big hit: a crater of 222 metres about once every 132 years
When a big one finally turns up, it is a test of the pattern, not just a record

The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.

The youngest planet yet

Planet-building models were built from many older planets, and one planet under a million years old is a case they did not predict, so it now tests them.
The Sun may have swallowed a planet

Models of how stars like the Sun age are built from many stars, and the Sun's own measured insides do not quite fit, so the gap is where the swallowed-planet idea comes from.

Where you've seen this

River floods

Towns plan for a flood expected once a century using records of many smaller floods, because the big ones are too rare to count directly.

Earthquakes

Scientists estimate how often a large quake strikes a fault from the many small quakes it produces.

Storm insurance

Insurers price a rare giant storm from the long record of ordinary ones.

The catch

One crater in 17 years of watching fits a once-in-132-years rate. It would also fit a rate several times higher, so one event cannot settle it.

And the whole of it

Engineers planning rovers and bases on the Moon will use this crater to learn how far a big hit disturbs the ground. Towns beside rivers are planned around the same kind of count for floods. In both cases the big event has been seen only a few times, and the plan rests on the many small ones.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

A space rock the size of a small building hit the Moon in spring 2024, and no telescope saw it. NASA's Moon orbiter had pictures of the spot from before and after, and a scientist found the new crater more than a year later during a routine check of the data. [3][4]

Why it works on us — The phrase once in a century makes the crater sound as if it was due. The 132-year figure is an average from models, and an average does not say which year the next big hit will come. [2]

Who gains

Intuitive Machines, a Texas space company — Its staff run image work for LRO's cameras, so the find and one of the two papers carry its scientists' names. [3][4]
Engineers planning rovers and bases on the Moon — They now have a measured case of how far one big fresh hit disturbs the ground and changes how it holds heat. [3][5]
SpaceX's Starlink network — The first orbital Starship flight is also the first to carry the larger V3 Starlink satellites, which only Starship can launch. [6]
Astronomers who use old telescope archives — The youngest planet ever found came from images already sitting in the Keck Observatory's archive. [8]
Planet hunters waiting for Roman — Its main camera and its starlight-blocking instrument have both passed their first tests in space. [10]

Who pays

SpaceX — Its first V3 Starlink satellites wait at least six more days to reach orbit. [6]
Scientists who build models of how planets form — Their models now have to explain a Jupiter-sized planet less than a million years old. [8]
Scientists who build standard models of the Sun — The new study suggests their models may be missing a swallowed planet, an idea they now have to test. [11]
The team running Roman's starlight-blocking instrument — It must sit idle for 30 days while water and chemicals leave its surfaces before more tests. [10]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

How far the rock and dust from McGetchin actually flew.

The Associated Press reports more than 100 kilometres and New Scientist more than 120. The paper itself gives the reach only as more than 1,000 times the crater's radius. [2][4][5]
02

Whether the rate of once every 132 years is right.

The figure comes from crater models. LRO has watched for only 17 years, and one big crater in that time cannot test the rate on its own. [2][3]
03

Whether it was an asteroid or a comet, and exactly how big.

The paper says a fragment of either. NASA gives the rock's size only as a range, three to six storeys tall. [2][3]
04

The day of the hit.

LRO's pictures only narrow it to between 11 April and 22 May 2024, and no telescope caught the flash. [3][4]
05

Why SpaceX moved Starship's first orbital try from 22 to 28 September.

The company announced the new date on 17 September and gave no explanation. [6]
06

Whether the Starship flight has the approval it needs.

When SpaceX set the first date, it said the flight was pending a regulator's approval. The update moving the date did not say whether that had come. [6][7]
07

How a planet as heavy as Jupiter formed in under a million years.

Co-author Lucas Cieza says even the best planet-building models are missing some steps, and the study does not say which. [8]
08

Whether the Sun really swallowed a planet.

The idea comes from computer models, and the authors say something else could explain the same gaps. They say the next step is to look for the planet's chemical mark inside the Sun. [11]
09

When Roman starts its science.

Its instruments need about another month of tests, and the telescope is still about 12 weeks from its working orbit. No start date is given. [10]

04 Hope carry this

A scientist checking NASA's Moon pictures for errors found the largest new crater ever seen, 222 metres across, and two teams have now measured how far its rock flew and how it changed the ground.

Also true today

NASA's Roman telescope cooled its main camera to about minus 143 degrees Celsius and turned it on, and the first readings from its parts came back as expected.
Astronomers found the youngest planet yet, less than a million years old, in pictures that had sat in the Keck Observatory's archive in Hawaii.