juliensimon/lunar-craters-robbins

Lunar Crater Database (Robbins 2019)

Part of the Planetary Science Datasets collection on Hugging Face.

The definitive lunar impact crater database, containing 384,278 craters with diameter >= 1 km. Essential reference for Artemis mission planning and lunar surface studies.

Dataset description

This database was compiled by Stuart J. Robbins (2019) using Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) imagery and LOLA topography. It is the most comprehensive catalog of lunar impact craters, covering the entire lunar surface with consistent methodology.

Schema

Column	Type	Description
crater_id	int64	Unique crater identifier
latitude_deg	float64	Crater center latitude (degrees, planetocentric)
longitude_deg	float64	Crater center longitude (degrees, 0-360 E)
diameter_km	float64	Crater rim-to-rim diameter (km)
depth_km	float64	Rim-to-floor depth (km)
floor_elevation_km	float64	Floor elevation (km)
depth_rim_sd_km	float64	Rim depth standard deviation (km)
size_class	string	Derived: small (<5 km), medium (5-20), large (20-100), giant (>100)

Quick stats

• 384,278 total craters
• Size distribution: 336,675 small, 36,690 medium, 10,602 large, 311 giant
• Diameter range: 1.00 -- 3411.7 km

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/lunar-craters-robbins", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Size distribution
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
df["diameter_km"].hist(bins=100, log=True)
plt.xlabel("Diameter (km)")
plt.ylabel("Count")
plt.title("Lunar Crater Size Distribution")
plt.show()

# South pole region (Artemis-relevant)
south_pole = df[(df["latitude_deg"] < -80)]
print(f"Craters near south pole: {len(south_pole):,}")
plt.scatter(south_pole["longitude_deg"], south_pole["latitude_deg"],
            s=south_pole["diameter_km"], alpha=0.5)
plt.title("Lunar South Pole Craters")
plt.show()

Data source

Robbins, S.J. (2019), *A New Global Database of Lunar Impact Craters >1-2 km:

1. Crater Locations and Sizes, Comparisons With Published Databases, and Global Analysis.* Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 124, 871-892. Distributed by USGS Astrogeology Science Center.

Pipeline

Source code: juliensimon/space-datasets

Support

If you find this dataset useful, please give it a ❤️ on the dataset page and share feedback in the Community tab! Also consider giving a ⭐️ to the space-datasets repo.

Citation

@dataset{lunar_craters_robbins,
  author = {Simon, Julien},
  title = {Lunar Crater Database (Robbins 2019)},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/lunar-craters-robbins},
  note = {Based on Robbins (2019) via USGS Astrogeology}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0