NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft has spotted a new crater on the surface of the moon, which was made by the impact of the agency's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer mission.

"The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team recently developed a new computer tool to search Narrow Angle Camera  before and after image pairs for new craters, the LADEE impact event provided a fun test," said Mark Robinson, LROC principal investigator from Arizona State University in Tempe. "As it turns there were several small surface changes found in the predicted area of the impact, the biggest and most distinctive was within 968 feet (295 meters) of the spot estimated by the LADEE operations team. What fun!"

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Officially ending on April 18, the LADEE mission required the spacecraft to crash into the Sundman V crater's eastern rim on the far side of the moon.

The LADEE's engines initially fired on April 11 to make a last maneuver and adjust to maintain its orbit on the Moon and guarantee it would hit the far side of the moon, far from the Apollo landing sites that Neil Armstrong and company left in 1969. The spacecraft's orbit decreased over a seven-day period, with the LADEE orbiting very low to the surface and near the mountain ridges and walls of craters on the surface of Earth's satellite to offer scientists the opportunity of collecting valuable science data.

When it finished its mission, LADEE left an impact site with an altitude of 8,497 feet and approximately half-a-mile from the rim of the Sundman V crater, which was only two-tenths of a mile north of the location that mission controllers were able to predict based on the spacecraft's tracking data.

The crater, which was only ten feet wide, was small in diameter and was hardly discernable on the LROC's NAC. The size of the crater was due to the spacecraft's slow speed, 3,800 miles per hour compared to most celestial impacts, and to its low density and mass.

TagsNational Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, Narrow Angle Camera, Sundman V crater, Apollo landing site, apollo, Moon landing, Neil Armstrong