structural:reformatting, information:filtering, structural:scholar_edition
Impact craters

Meteoroid collisions with solid Solar System objects, including the Moon, Mercury, Callisto, Ganymede, and most small moons and asteroids, create impact craters, which are the dominant geographic features of many of those objects. On other planets and moons with active surface geological processes, such as Earth, Venus, Mars, Europa, Io, and Titan, visible impact craters may become eroded, buried, or transformed by tectonics over time. In early literature, before the significance of impact cratering was widely recognised, the terms cryptoexplosion or cryptovolcanic structure were often used to describe what are now recognised as impact-related features on Earth. Molten terrestrial material ejected from a meteorite impact crater can cool and solidify into an object known as a tektite. These are often mistaken for meteorites.