Meteorite Strikes Moon, Explosion Bright Enough To Be Seen On Earth (Video)

A meteorite struck the Moon with such terrible force that the impact caused the biggest explosion ever seen in eight years of monitoring, according to a report from Wired. The impact was so strong that the thermal glow from molten rock at the site of impact was ten times brighter than anything else recorded by the program, and could be seen with the naked eye from Earth, over two hundred thousand miles away.

NASA set up the lunar impact team to study the impacts of small objects from space and try to predict their patterns for future space missions to the Moon. The program, launch in 2005, have recorded many different impacts on the surface of the moon, but have yet to see anything of this magnitude.

The impact was caused by a 40-kilogram sized rock about as big as a boulder. The meteor slammed into the Moon at about ninety thousands kilometers per hour. A crater of about 20 meters is estimated to have been left behind from the impact and resulting explosion. An equivalent explosion here on Earth would require five tons of TNT.

Every day, Earth, the Moon, and other celestial bodies are stuck by meteorites, but most impacts are so small they go unnoticed by the general population. NASA scientists believed that the meteorite that struck the Moon was part of a larger chain of meteors that were raining down on both the Moon and Earth. NASA also hopes that the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will be able to take a picture of the impact site. While a meteor of this size would most likely be burned up in the earth's atmosphere, the Moon is airless and lacks an atmosphere, thus larger impacts such as this are recorded more frequently. Recording this and other impacts should help make future space flights to the Moon safer by predicting how meteorite impacts react on the Moon.