New crater on the Moon

In news- Recently, a leftover piece of a spacecraft flying through space reportedly hit the surface of the moon creating a new crater that may be around 65 feet wide.

About recent impact –

The object which created the crater reportedly weighs around four tonnes and was racing towards the moon at a speed of 9,300 km an hour.

The piece of space junk was earlier believed to be a SpaceX rocket, but was later said to be the third-stage booster of Chang’e 5-T1 – a lunar mission launched by the China National Space Administration in 2014.
This is the first recorded unintentional case of space junk hitting the moon.
The location of the impact – on the far side of the moon – has made it difficult for the crater to be pictured and studied immediately.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2 orbiter are two active lunar missions that are capable of observing the crater and picturing it.

About Lunar craters-

Lunar craters are impact craters on Earth’s Moon.
Both the earth and the moon have been hit by multiple objects like asteroids throughout their existence, but craters on the moon are of a more permanent nature than those on earth.
Processes like erosion, tectonics, and volcanism keep the surface of the earth crater-free and remove traces of collisions that have happened in the past.
An absence of atmosphere means there is no wind system and no weather on the moon, and hence no cause for erosion of existing craters.
Currently, the earth has less than 200 known craters while the moon has thousands.
The word crater was adopted from the Greek word for “vessel” ( a Greek vessel used to mix wine and water).
Galileo built his first telescope in late 1609, and turned it to the Moon for the first time on November 30, 1609.
He discovered that, contrary to general opinion at that time, the Moon was not a perfect sphere, but had both mountains and cup-like depressions.
These were named craters by Johann Hieronymus Schröter (1791), extending its previous use with volcanoes