Education and
Public Engagement
at the Lunar and Planetary Institute
Explore! Mars: Inside and Out

Crater Creations


In the 30-45 minute Crater Creations activity, teams of children ages 8-13, experiment to create impact craters and examine the associated features. The children observe images of Martian craters and explore how the mass, shape, velocity, and angle of impactors affects the size and shape of the crater.


What's the Point?


For each child:

For each team of 4 to 8 children:

For the facilitator:





After each crater creation, ask them to carefully remove their impactor, to make the crater clearly visible (in reality, impactors are completely — or almost completely — obliterated upon impact; any remains of the impactor are called "meteorites").





If things might be different, why not stop trying to understand other planets until we can go there? First, what's the fun of that? And second, it may be a long time until we get there! Planetary geology is about creating a picture of what it is like on a planet and how it has changed over time. Geologists use every piece of evidence they can — images from telescopes and spacecraft, information from rovers — to help them paint this picture. As they get more information, they alter the picture to fit the evidence. By studying what is available, scientists can help to identify the important questions that we should address in future robotic and human missions! And by understanding how planets change — and why — we can better understand how Earth has and will change. Learning about the history of water on Mars can tell us more about our own future.