What are impact basins?

Impact basins are big craters that form when something really big hits a planet or moon.

Imagine you're playing outside and you throw a huge rock at your friend's sandbox, it makes a big hole in the sand, right? That’s like what happens on planets. When a space rock, also called an asteroid, crashes into a planet, it smacks the surface and creates a big crater, which we call an impact basin.

Think of a planet as a big, soft cookie. If you hit it with a heavy spoon, that’s like an asteroid, it makes a dent in the cookie. The bigger the spoon (or the asteroid), the bigger the dent (or the impact basin). These craters can be hundreds or even thousands of kilometers wide!

Sometimes, after the crash, the ground around the crater can sink down a little, making the crater look like a big bowl, just like when you eat a cookie and it gets all squishy.

So next time you see a crater on the moon, imagine that giant spoon hitting the cookie from way up in space!