A New Freckle on the Face of the Moon

A square, grayscale image of the surface of the Moon. The light comes from the east. Various small craters are scattered across the image with their western slopes illuminated and their eastern slopes in shadow. Two prominent boulders are in the upper left, casting stark shadows. One crater, located in the upper right, has distinctive bright rays radiating outwards. An inset in the bottom left shows this crater with the bright rays enlarged. A scale is provided in the bottom right and the crater can be inferred to be about 22 meters wide. — The LROC team discovered a new crater that formed since LRO entered orbit, identifiable in the above image by its bright ejecta rays. Image: M1350367385R. Crater centered at 26.1941° N, 36.1212° E. [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]

The Moon has been bombarded throughout its history. Although the days of dramatic collisions that formed massive craters are largely over, the Moon is still struck by space rocks (asteroids and comets) that create small, fresh craters. The LROC team identified this new 22-m diameter crater by detecting changes in images taken before and after the impact, constraining its formation to between December 2009 and December 2012.

A portion of the Moon's surface very similar to the first image in the article. A bright crater with distinctive ejecta rays blinks in and out of existence in the center of the frame. The images before and after the appearance of the crater are very closely aligned so that, for the most part, the features are the same. There are slight changes in the lighting angle between the before and after images. — The LROC Science Operations Center periodically runs temporal analyses to identify changes in images of the Moon. Observe how this crater altered the Moon's surface using images M116079187R (2009) and M1350367385R (2020). Images are approximately 480 m wide. Centered at 26.19412° N, 36.1212° E. [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]

The collision, which occurred just north of Römer crater, ejected bright material tens of meters from the crater rim, creating bright, sunburst-shaped rays. Over time, the rays will darken to the shade of the surrounding regolith as the material is exposed to space weathering. The LROC discovery of new craters is essential for understanding impact rates and crater degradation rates over time, as well as for planning safe, successful missions to the Moon.

See if you can find the new crater in the Zoomify below! Image: M1136306535. [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University]

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Published by Mateja Rothlisberger on 13 November 2025