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Meteoroid triggers flash light on moon
Source: Agencies |
May 18, 2013, Saturday
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Print Edition
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AN automated telescope monitoring the moon has captured images of a 40-kilogram rock slamming into the lunar surface, creating a bright flash of light, NASA scientists said on Friday.
The explosion on March 17 was the biggest seen since NASA began watching the moon for meteoroid impacts about eight years ago. So far, more than 300 strikes have been recorded.
"It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as anything we've ever seen before," Bill Cooke, with NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, said in a statement.
A NASA satellite orbiting the moon is now on a hunt for the newly formed crater, which is estimated to be as wide as 20 meters. The flash was so bright that anyone looking at the moon at that time could have seen it without a telescope, NASA said.
The explosion on March 17 was the biggest seen since NASA began watching the moon for meteoroid impacts about eight years ago. So far, more than 300 strikes have been recorded.
"It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as anything we've ever seen before," Bill Cooke, with NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, said in a statement.
A NASA satellite orbiting the moon is now on a hunt for the newly formed crater, which is estimated to be as wide as 20 meters. The flash was so bright that anyone looking at the moon at that time could have seen it without a telescope, NASA said.
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