March 17, 2013 Lunar Impact Forms a New Crater
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- 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.
On March 17, 2013, a NASA telescope that monitors the night side of the Moon recorded a bright flash in Mare Imbrium, at about 21°N, 24°W. The flash was one of the brightest ever recorded, and it was caused by the impact of a meteoroid estimated to be roughly a foot (30 to 40 cm) wide and just under a hundred pounds (40 kg), hitting the Moon at 60,000 miles per hour (25 km/sec).
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
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Animator
- Ernie Wright (USRA) [Lead]
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Scientists
- John Keller (NASA/GSFC)
- Mark Robinson (Arizona State University)
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Producer
- Dan Gallagher (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
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Project support
- Ian Jones (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Datasets used in this visualization
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LRO DEM (Digital Elevation Map)
ID: 653 -
LRO WAC 643nm High Sun Global Mosaic
ID: 803 -
DE421 (JPL DE421)
ID: 752Planetary ephemerides
This dataset can be found at: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?ephemerides#planets
See all pages that use this dataset
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.