Asteroid that formed moon's Imbrium Basin may have been protoplanet-sized
Wednesday, July 20, 2016 - 12:21
in Astronomy & Space
Around 3.8 billion years ago, an asteroid more than 150 miles across, roughly equal to the length of New Jersey, slammed into the Moon and created the Imbrium Basin—the right eye of the fabled Man in the Moon. This new size estimate, published in the journal Nature, suggests an Imbrium impactor that was two times larger in diameter and 10 times more massive than previous estimates.