This is a list of craters on Mars.
Impact craters on
Mars larger than 1 km (0.62 mi) exist by the hundreds of thousands, but only about one thousand of them have names.[1] Names are assigned by the
International Astronomical Union after petitioning by relevant scientists, and in general, only craters that have a significant research interest are given names. Martian craters are named after famous scientists and
science fiction authors, or if less than 60 km (37 mi) in diameter, after towns on
Earth. Craters cannot be named for living people, and names for small craters are rarely intended to commemorate a specific town.[2] Latitude and longitude are given as planetographic coordinates with west longitude.
Names are grouped into tables for each letter of the alphabet, containing the crater's name (linked if article exists), coordinates, diameter in kilometers, year of official name adoption (approval), the
eponym ("named after") and a direct reference to the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature.[1]
As of 2017, Martian craters account for 21% of all 5,211 named craters in the
Solar System. Apart from the
Moon, no other body has as many named craters as Mars. Other, non-planetary bodies with numerous named craters include
Callisto (
141),
Ganymede (
131),
Rhea (128),
Vesta (90),
Ceres (90),
Dione (73),
Iapetus (58),
Enceladus (53),
Tethys (50) and
Europa (
41). For a full list, see
List of craters in the Solar System. The total number of craters on Mars greater than 1 kilometre in diameter is approximately 385,000, with 21% of those (~85,000) being over 3 kilometers in diameter.[3] The number of craters on Mars over 25 metres in diameter is suggested to be approximately 90 million.[4]
Largest craters
Some of the largest craters on Mars remain unnamed. Diameters differ depending on source data. The largest confirmed impact basins on Mars are
Utopia (buried, estimated diameter 3,300 km)
Hellas (2,300 km),
Argyre ( 1,800 km) and
Isidis (1,500 km).
only this data-set provides an approval date, eponym and WGSPN-link to an object webpage;
Mars Crater Database Search, Robbins, S.J., and B.M. Hynek (2012). A New Global Database of Mars Impact Craters ≥1 km: 1. Database Creation, Properties, and Parameters. Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets
Elliptical measurements (used to compute the approx. area), and the details on unnamed craters are only available in this data-set.
^The entries containing two diameter values are due to presumably newer data being available via
Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. The value consistent with the Robbins data is included in parentheses for completeness.
Example crater
An approximate true-color image, taken by Mars exploration rover Opportunity, shows the view of
Victoria crater from Cape Verde. It was captured over a three-week period, from October 16 – November 6, 2006.
^
ab"Nomenclature Search Results: Mars > Crater, Craters". US Geological Survey. Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature – International Astronomical Union (IAU) Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN). Retrieved 10 August 2017.
^"Categories for Naming Features on Planets and Satellites". US Geological Survey. Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature – International Astronomical Union (IAU) Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN). Retrieved 10 August 2017.