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On Sept. 11, 2013, an asteroid hit the Moon. That happens all the time, but most of the cosmic debris is tiny, far too small to detect from the Earth.
But this one was different. Roughly a meter across and moving at interplanetary speeds when it slammed into the lunar surface, it created the brightest explosion ever seen on the Moon! The whole thing was captured on video:
The brightness of the explosion together with the typical impact speed means the asteroid was probably about 0.6 to 1.4 meters across—somewhere between the size of a big beach ball and a decent-sized clothes dresser—and had a mass of about 450 kilograms (1,000 pounds, or half a ton). Those are estimates, however; it may have been somewhat smaller or bigger. The impact energy was about the same as detonating 15 tons of TNT.