NASA observes powerful meteor strike on moon

The Meteoroid Environment Office of NASA witnessed the most powerful meteor strike on the moon ever recorded in eight years since its inception.

On 17 March, a meteor travelling at 90,000 kilometres per hour struck the moon causing an explosion that equalled five tonnes of TNT.

According to Bill Cooke head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, the meteor exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as anything the office had seen before. He added, anyone looking at the moon at the moment of impact could have seen the explosion, without a telescope. He said, for about one second the impact site was glowing like a fourth-magnitude star.

The meteoroid weighed 88-pound (40 kg) and was 0.3 to 0.4 metres wide and according to estimates of scientists, the impact crater could be as wide as 66 feet (20 metres).

The event might not have been an isolated one given the large number of meteors observed in earth's skies on the same night, according to experts.

Cooke said, the office would keep an eye out for signs of a repeat performance next year when the earth-moon system passed through the same region of space. He added, meanwhile, the office would continue with analysis of the event.

According to scientists, the moon, like most bodies in the solar system, was subject to relatively frequent bombardment by small space rocks. In 2005 NASA set up a specific programme to identify how often they occured.

Over 300 explosions have been identified since by the team, most of them faint and usually happening at the same time as a meteor shower on earth. Researchers are interested in knowing the frequency of such impacts, which could come in handy when planning moonwalks during future astronaut trips to our satellite.

The explosion may have generated a crater roughly 20 metres wide, which the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter may image the next time it passed over the area, allowing researchers to see a very fresh impact on the moon.