Study: Asteroid Hit Created Two ‘Grand Canyons’ on Moon

01A new study suggests an asteroid strike on the moon billions of years ago left two huge valleys about the size of Earth's Grand Canyon.

02Researchers from the United States and Britain said their research shows the two steep valleys, or canyons, likely formed in less than ten minutes.

03They noted the crash, or impact, happened near the South Pole on the far side of the moon.

04That is the side of the moon which always faces away from Earth.

05The area is known as the Schrödinger Impact Basin.

06The speed of the incoming object, which the team said might have been a comet, was estimated to be around 55,000 kilometers per hour.

07The strike likely happened about 3.8 billion years ago.

08The researchers used data collected by a spacecraft operated by the American Space Agency, NASA.

09That vehicle, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, has been capturing Luna data since entering orbit around the moon in June 2009.

10One main goal of the orbiter's mission was to create a highly detailed, three-dimensional, or 3D, map of the moon.

11The data has been used by NASA to learn more about lunar resources and to plan for future missions.

12The agency noted that the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter had already collected as much data as all other planetary missions combined.

13The team studying the canyons used the orbiter's map data to simulate the path of the incoming object, as well as material that was displaced by the crash.

14The scientists recently published a study describing their results in Nature Communications.

15The group's simulations suggested the space rock passed over the South Pole before hitting.

16It then created a huge basin and launched rocky materials at speeds up to 1 kilometer per second.

17The researchers said material was sent flying and struck the lunar surface like missiles.

18This resulted in the creation of the canyons.

19The team said the canyons appear comparable in size to the Grand Canyon in the U.S.

20state of Arizona.

21The study's lead writer was David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

22He told the Associated Press that findings suggest the asteroid strike was a very violent geologic process.

23Kring and his team estimated the asteroid was 25 kilometers across.

24They estimated that the energy needed to create the two canyons would have been more than 130 times greater than the power of all the world's current nuclear weapons.

25Kring said most of the rock and debris was thrown in a direction away from the South Pole.

26That finding is good news for NASA, which plans to land astronauts in that area in the future.

27Kring noted it should improve the exploration possibilities of future astronauts.

28Because debris from the Schrödinger impact was jettisoned away from the lunar South Pole, ancient rocks in the polar region will be at or close to the surface, Kring told Reuters news agency.

29This should make it easier for future American astronauts to collect them.

30NASA's future lunar exploration plans are known as the agency's Artemis program.

31The program aims to return astronauts to the moon for the first time since NASA's Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

32The agency's current plan is to send astronauts on a trip around the moon next year.

33That would be followed a year or so later by a landing attempt on the lunar surface.

34The researchers said older rocks in the area can help scientists gain a better understanding of the moon's past history.

35They could also help answer questions about the formation of Earth.

36Kring noted it is currently not clear whether the two huge canyons are permanently shadowed like some of the craters at the moon's South Pole.

37That is something that we're clearly going to be re-examining, he said.

38I'm Brian Lynn.

39I'm Brian Lynn.

40I'm Brian Lynn.

41I'm Brian Lynn.

42I'm Brian Lynn.