We may think of the moon as a silvery, silent realm. But in truth, it’s a war zone. Asteroids and comet shards slam into it all the time, giving the surface new scars to accompany its wealth of ancient craters.

Now, NASA says it has found the largest fresh crater — a whopping 728 feet across — seen on the moon since at least 2009. Such an event may be a rarity, but the discovery has important implications for humanity’s future in space.

Finding such a large cavity in the lunar surface is “very interesting and exciting,” said Mark Boslough, a physicist and expert on impact events at the University of New Mexico who was not involved with two new studies published this month in the journal Science Advances.

The moon, lacking much of an atmosphere, is defenseless against cosmic vandals of all sizes. It’s sometimes injured by spent rocket boosters falling to its surface, and it’s regularly thwacked by space rocks.

The day-to-day odds of a future moon base being pancaked by a huge object are low — but not zero.

A lunar base could always get supremely unlucky.

“I absolutely think that this is a significant risk to long-term operations on the moon,” Boslough said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times

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