A large mass of unknown material has been discovered on the largest crater on the Moon and scientists have no clue what it is. In an April 2019 study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the researchers said that the mass could contain metal from an asteroid that crashed into the celestial satellite — which resulted in the aforementioned crater, known as the Lunar South Pole-Aitken basin. Lead author Dr. Peter James, assistant professor of planetary geophysics at Baylor University, said in a statement, “Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground.”
That’s roughly how much unexpected mass we detected.” According to NASA, the Lunar South Pole-Aitken basin t is roughly 1,550 miles in diameter and it stretches across approximately one-fourth of the Moon. The Moon’s circumference is roughly 11,000 kilometers.
