With the help of data collected by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL), Professor Jay Melosh and a team of researchers at Purdue University in West Lafayette have discovered one of the widest craters on the moon.

According to the researchers, the discovered moon crater has been provisionally named after the aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart. Announcement about the discovery has been made at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. The crater was undetected by lunar observations from centuries. According to the researchers, the newly discovered crater is 124-mile-wide.

Earhart, an American aviation pioneer and author, was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. For this record, she was given the US Distinguished Flying Cross. Back in 1935, she became part of the faculty of the Purdue University aviation department as a visiting faculty member to counsel women on careers.

“This is one of the biggest craters on the moon, but no one knew it was there. Craters are named after explorers or scientists, and Amelia Earhart had not yet received this honor”, said lead researcher Jay Melosh, of Perdue University and a member of the GRAIL science team.

According to Melosh, Earhart attempted flight around the world and the researchers considered that she deserved to make it all the way to the moon for motivating various future explorers and astronauts.

Earhart set various other records but disappeared while attempting to make a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937 in a Purdue-funded Lockheed Model 10 Electra. As per the researchers, the crater is partially buried under the moon’s pockmarked surface and is located on the Earth-facing side of the moon.