A newly discovered, massive lunar crater complicates plans to set up human colonies on the Moon. According to a study published in Science Advances, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted a fresh, 728-foot-wide crater named McGetchin, created when a large space rock struck the Moon’s eastern edge in early 2024.The impact created a 141-foot-deep pit, deep enough to stack three school buses and end them. It blasted out a four-mile-wide “cold spot” of disrupted lunar soil near radioactive -looking debris trails stretching 60 miles out. The moon has no protective atmosphere like Earth’s, so every cosmic rock that hits it hits with full, raw force. The moon is no stranger to these impacts; a quick look at its pockmarked surface tells you that, but impacts of this scale happen only about once every 132 years.The impact released the energy equivalent of 15,500 tons of TNT. Luckily, we’ve got a decent analog for that captured by countless people back in 2013, when the Chelyabinsk meteor exploded over Russia at an equivalent energy dispersal, damaging buildings and shattering windows as it went, causing over 1,000 injuries and no deaths.A New Moon Crater Highlights a Threat That Doesn’t Need a Direct HitIf we plan to build moon bases to expand humanity’s reach, we’ll probably need to outfit the moon with bleeding-edge meteor-detection systems and plenty of meteor-deflecting strategies. An asteroid doesn’t even need to hit a moon base directly to turn astronauts into dust. Secondary rock ejecta flying at hypervelocity can easily shred relatively delicate habitats from several miles away.Setting up a permanent human colony will require a complete rethink of how humans live, but maybe a little sprinkling of medieval thinking when it comes to building big, thick walls that protect against what are essentially space-age cannonballs.The post A Massive New Moon Crater Is Raising Questions About Future Lunar Bases appeared first on VICE.