Traveling at 56,000 miles per hour a 40 kilogram rock slammed into the moon creating an explosion equivalent to 5 tons of TNT. The event happened on March 17th and was so bright it was actually visible from Earth with the naked eye. This is by far the largest explosion that NASA has detected since they started monitoring impacts on the moon in 2005.
The moon is no stranger to impacts as you can clearly tell just by looking at the image above. What makes this recent impact so cool is the fact that it was relatively large. Most of the impacts on the moon’s surface are tiny by comparison, many of them merely a few centimeters wide. Anything is possible and someday we may even see a larger rock smash into our moon.
Thanks to Wired for the update.