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The Moon · Crater · 1974th largest named feature

McGetchin

Thomas R.; American geologist and planetary scientist (1936-1979).

What McGetchin is

McGetchin is a crater — a circular depression, almost always an impact scar — on The Moon, 0.2 km across, centred at 1.4° N, 67.2° E in the Mare Undarum quadrangle. It is the 1974th largest named feature on The Moon and the 1601st largest of its class there.

Where the name comes from

Thomas R.; American geologist and planetary scientist (1936-1979). The International Astronomical Union approved the name in 2026, under the theme it applies to every crater on The Moon. Of the 1615 features of this class catalogued on The Moon, the naming categories run Germany (234), American (229), France (163), Great Britain (160).

Feature class
a circular depression, almost always an impact scar
Diameter
0.2 km
about 5.0 times shorter than a 10-minute walk
Coordinates
1.4° N, 67.2° E
Planetocentric, on The Moon
Name approved
2026
By the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature
Quadrangle
Mare Undarum
Map sheet on The Moon
Naming category
United States
North America

What it would take to settle McGetchin

The Moon scores 29.1 as a world. That number is the same for every square metre of it — but sunlight, water, radiation and the ground under your feet are not. This is the same question asked at 1.4° N, 67.2° E.

Settlement difficulty here
27/ 100
Better than most of this world
The Moon overall
29.1
2.1 easier than the median site
Ranked
216th
of 2,023 named places on The Moon

What this spot has going for it is earth link near side — Earth stands 23° above the horizon and never moves. What works against it is water outside the ice-bearing latitudes.

Computed from McGetchin's catalogued latitude, longitude and feature class — 84% of the model's weight had a basis here, and one axis was dropped as not applicable to The Moon (radiation geometry). Gravity, pressure, delta-v and distance from the Sun are the same everywhere on The Moon and are already counted in the world's own index, not again here.

What this cannot see: elevation. Slope, local shadowing and the polar “peaks of eternal light” — ridge tops near the poles of a barely tilted world that catch sun almost continuously while a crater floor kilometres away never does — need a terrain model this does not have. Where a real mission targets a pole, that is usually why.

What is next to it

The largest crater features on The Moon

All 1,615 craters on The Moon — mapped together, with the naming theme and the size distribution.