All Articles Tagged As: impact craters

MESSENGER discovers an unusual impact basin on Mercury (5/4/2009)

A previously unknown, large impact basin has been discovered by the MESSENGER spacecraft during its second flyby of Mercury in October 2008. The impact basin, now named Rembrandt, more than 700 kilometers (430 miles) in diameter. If the Rembrandt basin had formed on the east coast of the United States, it would span the distance between Washington, D.C., and Boston. ...> Full Article

NASA's Mars Rover To Head Toward Bigger Crater (10/1/2008)

NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity is setting its sights on a crater more than 20 times larger than its home for the past two years. ...> Full Article

Mercury's 'Spider' Pantheon Fossae Formation Linked To Asteroid Impact (9/30/2008)

The Pantheon Fossae, a radiating web of troughs located in the giant Caloris Basin of Mercury, is directly linked to an impact crater at the centre of the web. ...> Full Article

Study Puts Solar Spin on Asteroids, their Moons & Earth Impacts (7/12/2008)

Asteroids with moons, which scientists call binary asteroids, are common in the solar system. A longstanding question has been how the majority of such moons are formed. A trio of astronomers from Maryland and France say the surprising answer is sunlight, which can increase or decrease the spin rate of an asteroid. ...> Full Article

Evidence of massive asteroid impact on Mars supported by computer simulations (6/27/2008)

The dramatic differences between the northern and southern hemispheres of Mars have puzzled scientists for 30 years. One of the proposed explanations--a massive asteroid impact--now has strong support from computer simulations carried out by two groups of researchers ...> Full Article

Observatory tracks asteroid to hit mars (12/22/2007)

New Mexico Tech's Magdalena Ridge Observatory (MRO) is already making its mark in the annals of MROastronomy research after being recently tasked by NASA to make detailed observations of an asteroid that is now given a 1 in 75 chance of hitting Mars on January 30, 2008. ...> Full Article

New research reveals a large asteroid breakup to be the likely source of the impactor that caused a mass extinction event on Earth 65 million years ago (9/6/2007)

The impactor believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs and other life forms on Earth some 65 million years ago has been traced back to a breakup event in the main asteroid belt. A joint U.S.-Czech team from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Charles University in Prague suggests that the parent object of asteroid (298) Baptistina disrupted when it was hit by another large asteroid, creating numerous large fragments that would later create the Chicxulub crater on the Yucatan Peninsula as well as the prominent Tycho crater found on the Moon. ...> Full Article

Impact Craters in Tyrrhena Terra (8/1/2007)

The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express obtained images of the Tyrrhena Terra region on Mars. ...> Full Article