Massive Moon explosion captured on NASA video
NASA
cameras have captured video of the largest explosion it has ever seen on the
moon, when a meteorite crashed into the lunar surface in a bright burst of
light visible to the naked eye. 'On March 17, 2013, an object about the size of
a small boulder hit the lunar surface,' said Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid
Environment Office, in a statement. 'It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as
bright as anything we've ever seen before.'
For the past eight
years NASA astronomers have been monitoring the moon for signs of meteoroids
crashing into the moon's surface and the space agency's lunar impact team has
detected more than 300 strikes. Ron Suggs, an analyst at the Marshall Space
Flight Centre, was the first to notice the massive March 17 impact in a digital
video recorded by one of the monitoring program's 14-inch telescopes. 'It
jumped right out at me, it was so bright,' said Suggs in a statement on the
science.nasa.gov website.
'For about one second,
the impact site was glowing like a fourth magnitude star,' NASA said. The
meteoroid was traveling around 56,000 miles per hour when it slammed into the
moon's surface. It weighed around 88 pounds and measured about one foot in
diametre, according to NASA.The meteorite which fell in Russia's Chelyabinsk
region in February, injuring more than 1,000 people, measured 55 feet across.
The Earth's
atmosphere protects the planet, as space debris usually burns up before
reaching the surface. The moon has no such protective layer. The impact on the
moon could have created a crater as wide as 66 feet, and NASA says its Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter will be on the lookout for it the next time it passes
over the site.
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