NASA’S Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has spied a new crater on the lunar surface; one made from the impact of NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission.

“We’re made of star stuff,” astronomer Carl Sagan famously said. Nuclear reactions that happened in ancient stars generated much of the material that makes up our bodies, our planet and our solar system. When stars explode in violent deaths called supernovae, those newly formed elements escape and spread out in the universe.

The remains of a fatal interaction between a dead star and its asteroid supper have been observed in detail for the first time. An international team of astronomers used the Very Large Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile and other observatories to study the shattered remains of an asteroid around a stellar remnant — a white dwarf.