Asteroid the size of six-storey building crashed into moon in 'once-in-a-lifetime' moment, says NASA

Scientists have discovered a crater on the moon which has a span the length of two football pitches.

The steep-sided hole, which is around 728ft (222m) wide and up to 141ft (43m) deep, was created by a powerful impact and is the largest newly-formed crater ever found in the solar system.

Such a large-scale event is estimated to take place only once every 132 years, researchers said, as NASA prepares to build a base for astronauts on the moon's south pole.

In what started as a routine data-quality check, Robert Wagner, a scientist with NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), scanned a giant moon map on his computer screen in May 2024, when an unusually large bright spot circled by a dark halo caught his attention.

It implied that surface material in that region had been shaken up, NASA said.

"I just stopped, dropped everything, and started looking into what that spot was," Mr Wagner said.

The crater formed on the moon's eastern edge sometime between 11 April and 22 May 2024, after a comet or asteroid fragment the size of a building up to six storeys high struck the surface, the space agency said.

"This event constitutes a statistically rare, effectively once-in-a-lifetime observation," the scientists wrote in one of two studies appearing on the subject in the journal Science Advances.

The crater - named after the late Thomas McGetchin, a former director of Houston's Lunar and Planetary Institute - is three times bigger than the previous record-holder, found by the LRO a decade ago.

The moon strike escaped real-time detection by telescopes on Earth and in space.

LRO's wide-angle images were not identified in the crush of data until August 2025. The spacecraft gathered more detailed images last autumn, followed by confirmation of the discovery early this year.

This latest impact churned the lunar surface for more than 66 miles (100 km).

Dust and rocky soil were hurled away at a higher angle than expected, according to Mark Robinson, chief scientist for LRO's cameras and lead author for one of the studies.

A four-mile (6.4km) wide cold spot around the new crater was identified in a separate study, consistent with a loosening of the moon's top soil.

Researchers said the cooling occurs because the impact fluffs up the layer of loose rock, dust and soil around the crater, making it less dense and therefore less able to retain heat.

The large extent of this cold spot is striking, scientists say, because it shows that impacts can modify the moon's surface far beyond the crater itself.

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The LRO's numerous crater discoveries since its launch in 2009 show that the moon's top inch (2.5cm) of soil is being overturned by ejected material every 80,000 years, quicker than previously thought, according to Mr Robinson.

Contrary to the popular belief that the Apollo moonwalkers' dusty lunar footprints will leave a permanent mark, they will "definitely be long gone in that time frame", Mr Robinson said.

The next step is to calculate the risk of ejected crater material striking NASA's planned moon base, he added.

(c) Sky News 2026: Asteroid the size of six-storey building crashed into moon in 'once-in-a-lifetime' moment, s