Variations in craters across the solar system

Although impact craters on all the solid bodies of the solar system are grossly similar, their appearances from body to body can vary dramatically. The most-notable differences are a result of variations among the bodies in surface gravity and crustal properties. A higher surface gravitational acceleration creates a greater pressure difference between the floor of the crater and the surface surrounding the crater. That pressure difference is thought to play a large role in driving the collapse process that forms complex craters, the effect being that the smallest complex craters seen on higher-gravity bodies are smaller than those on lower-gravity bodies. For example, the diameters of the smallest craters with central peaks on the Moon, Mercury, and Venus decrease in inverse proportion to the bodies’ surface gravities; Mercury’s surface gravity is more than twice that of the Moon, whereas Venus’s gravity is more than five times that of the Moon.

The inherent strength of the impacted surface has an effect similar to that of surface gravity in that it is easier for craters to collapse on bodies with weaker near-surface materials. For example, the presence of water in the near-surface materials of Mars, a condition thought to be likely, would help explain why the smallest complex craters there are smaller than on Mercury, which has a similar surface gravity. Layering in a body’s near-surface material in which weak material overlies stronger strata is thought to modify the excavation process and contribute to the presence of craters with flat floors that contain a central pit. Such craters are particularly prominent on Ganymede, the largest moon of Jupiter.

Observations of the solid planets show clearly that the presence of an atmosphere changes the appearance of impact craters, but details of how the cratering process is altered are poorly understood. Comparison of craters on planets with and without an atmosphere shows no obvious evidence that an atmosphere does more than minimally affect the excavation of the cavity and any subsequent collapse. It does show, however, that an atmosphere strongly affects emplacement of the ejecta blanket. On an airless body the particles of excavated material follow ballistic trajectories. In the presence of an atmosphere most of this material mixes with the atmosphere and creates a surface-hugging fluid flow away from the crater that is analogous to volcanic pyroclastic flow on Earth. On an airless body an ejecta blanket shows a steady decrease in thickness away from the crater, but on a planet with an atmosphere the fluid flow of excavated material lays down a blanket that is relatively constant in thickness away from the crater and that ends abruptly at the outer edge of the flow. The well-preserved ejecta blankets around Venusian craters show this flow emplacement, and field observations of Earth’s impact structures indicate that much of their ejecta were emplaced as flows. On Mars most of the ejecta blankets also appear to have been emplaced as flows, but many of these are probably mudflows caused by abundant water near the Martian surface.

Meteorite craters as measures of geologic activity

A common misconception is that Earth has very few impact craters on its surface because its atmosphere is an effective shield against meteoroids. Earth’s atmosphere certainly slows and prevents typical asteroidal fragments up to a few tens of metres across from reaching the surface and forming a true hypervelocity impact crater, but kilometre-scale objects of the kind that created the smallest telescopically visible craters on the Moon are not significantly slowed by Earth’s atmosphere (see meteor and meteoroid: Meteorites—meteoroids that survive atmospheric entry). The Moon and Earth certainly experienced similar numbers of these larger impact events, but on Earth subsequent geologic processes (e.g., volcanism and plate tectonic processes) completely eliminated or severely degraded the craters. The dominant role of erosion as a geologic process that destroys craters is unique to Earth among the solid bodies that have been well-studied. Erosional processes may be important in eliminating craters on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, if methane proves to play the role there that water does in Earth’s hydrologic cycle. Elsewhere only volcanic and tectonic processes are capable of eliminating large meteorite craters.

An absence or sparseness of craters in a given region of a large solid body indicates that relatively recent geologic activity has resurfaced it or otherwise greatly altered its surface appearance. For example, on the Moon the dark mare regions are much less heavily cratered than the light highland areas because the mare were flooded by basaltic volcanic flows about one billion years after formation of the highland areas. From simple counts of the craters larger than a given size per unit area for different regions of a body, it is possible to determine relative surface ages of different regions in order to gain insight into a body’s geologic history. For the Moon absolute ages can be assigned to regions with different numbers of craters per unit area because surface samples from several regions were collected during Apollo lunar landing missions and dated in laboratories on Earth. For other large bodies, assigning absolute ages to given regions based on the number of craters is based on estimates of asteroidal and cometary impact rates, the size range of those objects, and the size of the crater that forms from a given impacting object. Very little data exist as a basis for these estimates, particularly for impact rates. Absolute ages determined for planetary surfaces other than the Moon consequently have large uncertainties relative to the age of the solar system.