March 17, 2013 Lunar Impact Forms a New Crater
- Visualizations by:
- Ernie Wright
- View full credits
Artist's conception of the March 17, 2013 lunar impact as seen from near the impact site in Mare Imbrium.
This video is also available on our YouTube channel.
A few months after the impact, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) camera team (LROC) found the crater formed by the impact. They compared LRO images taken before and after the impact and found a new crater 18 meters (60 feet) wide, with rays of ejecta that extend several kilometers.

Before and after images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter narrow-angle camera showing the new crater formed by the March 17 impact. This pair is at the original resolution of roughly 1.3 meters per pixel. The before image is cropped from M183689789L taken February 12, 2012. The after image is from M1129645568L taken July 28, 2013.

Before and after images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter narrow-angle camera showing the new crater formed by the March 17 impact, centered on the crater and magnified 4x from the original resolution of roughly 1.3 meters per pixel. The before image is cropped from M183689789L taken February 12, 2012. The after image is from M1129645568L taken July 28, 2013.
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Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
Animator
- Ernie Wright (USRA) [Lead]
Scientists
- John Keller (NASA/GSFC)
- Mark Robinson (Arizona State University)
Producer
- Dan Gallagher (KBRwyle)
Project support
- Ian Jones (ADNET)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET)
Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Datasets used in this visualization
LRO DEM (A.K.A. Digital Elevation Map) (Collected with the LOLA sensor)
DE421 (A.K.A. JPL DE421)
Planetary ephemerides
Dataset can be found at: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?ephemerides#planets
See more visualizations using this data setLRO WAC 643nm High Sun Global Mosaic (Collected with the LROC sensor)
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.