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Crater counting refers to a method for estimating the age of a planet's surface. The method is based upon the hypothesis that a new surface forms with zero impact crater
Impact crater

In the broadest sense, the term impact crater can be applied to any depression, natural or manmade, resulting from the high velocity impact of a projectile with larger body....
s, and that impact craters accumulate at some known, roughly constant, rate. The method has been calibrated using the ages of samples returned from the Moon
Moon

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the List of natural satellites by diameter satellite in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is km, about thirty times the diameter of the Earth....
.

accuracy of age estimates of geologically young surfaces based on crater counting on Mars
MARS

In cryptography, MARS is a block cipher that was IBM's submission to the Advanced Encryption Standard process. MARS was selected as an AES finalist in August 1999, after the AES2 conference in March 1999, where it was voted as the fifth and last finalist algorithm....
 has been questioned due to formation of large amounts of secondary crater
Secondary crater

Secondary craters are impact craters formed by the ejecta that was thrown out of a larger crater. They sometimes form radial crater chains....
s.






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Crater counting refers to a method for estimating the age of a planet's surface. The method is based upon the hypothesis that a new surface forms with zero impact crater
Impact crater

In the broadest sense, the term impact crater can be applied to any depression, natural or manmade, resulting from the high velocity impact of a projectile with larger body....
s, and that impact craters accumulate at some known, roughly constant, rate. The method has been calibrated using the ages of samples returned from the Moon
Moon

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the List of natural satellites by diameter satellite in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is km, about thirty times the diameter of the Earth....
.

Crater counting on Mars

The accuracy of age estimates of geologically young surfaces based on crater counting on Mars
MARS

In cryptography, MARS is a block cipher that was IBM's submission to the Advanced Encryption Standard process. MARS was selected as an AES finalist in August 1999, after the AES2 conference in March 1999, where it was voted as the fifth and last finalist algorithm....
 has been questioned due to formation of large amounts of secondary crater
Secondary crater

Secondary craters are impact craters formed by the ejecta that was thrown out of a larger crater. They sometimes form radial crater chains....
s. In one case, the impact that created Zunil crater
Zunil (crater)

Zunil is an impact crater in Athabasca Valles, Mars with a diameter of . It is named after the Guatemalan town Zunil. The crater was discovered by McEwan et al after following ray system along the crater's radial lines back to the crater....
 produced about a hundred million of secondary craters, some more than 1000 km from the primary impact. If similar impacts also produced comparable amounts of secondaries, it would mean a particular crater-free area of Mars had not been "splattered by a large, infrequent primary crater", as opposed to suffering relatively few small primary impacts since its formation.

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See also

  • Moon
    Moon

    The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the List of natural satellites by diameter satellite in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is km, about thirty times the diameter of the Earth....
  • Impact crater
    Impact crater

    In the broadest sense, the term impact crater can be applied to any depression, natural or manmade, resulting from the high velocity impact of a projectile with larger body....


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