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Impact Evidence: Meteor Crater and the Moon
Source:
Image Credit:
USGS (left)
NASA/ASU (right)
Published:
June 9, 2021
Space objects have battered planetary surfaces in our solar system since its formation. On worlds like Earth, weather and erosion quickly erase most of the evidence. The Moon, with little atmosphere and no weather of its own, keeps a much more complete record of our solar system’s history. Careful study of the craters still present on Earth helps us to understand what this history means. The lunar crater shown here is called Copernicus.
If these two images were shown to scale, Copernicus Crater would be about 70 times as wide as Meteor Crater.
