juliensimon/impact-craters

---
license: cc0-1.0
pretty_name: "Impact Craters"
language:
- en
description: >-
Impact craters across the solar system sourced from Wikidata.
4,507 craters spanning 39 planetary bodies, with diameter,
age, and coordinates where available.
size_categories:
- 1K<n<10K
task_categories:
- tabular-classification
tags:
- space
- planetary-science
- craters
- impact
- wikidata
- open-data
- tabular-data
- parquet
configs:
- config_name: default
default: true
data_files:
- split: train
path: data/impact_craters.parquet
---

# Impact Craters

*Part of the [Planetary Science Datasets](https://huggingface.co/collections/juliensimon/planetary-science-datasets-69c2d4683bd6a66c34fb4af2) collection on Hugging Face.*

Comprehensive database of impact craters across the solar system — **4,507** craters
on **39** planetary bodies, sourced from [Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/).

## Dataset description

Impact craters are among the most widespread geological features in the solar system,
formed when asteroids, comets, or meteoroids collide with a planetary surface. They are
critical windows into a body's geological history: crater size-frequency distributions
reveal relative ages of surfaces, and large craters like Chicxulub on Earth have been
linked to mass extinction events.

This dataset aggregates crater records for bodies ranging from Mercury and the Moon to
Mars, Ceres, Vesta, and outer-planet moons. Each record includes the crater name,
diameter (where known), estimated age in millions of years, the parent body, and
geographic coordinates for bodies with established coordinate systems.

Sourced from Wikidata's structured knowledge base (class Q55818: impact crater),
maintained by the WikiProject Astronomy and WikiProject Solar System communities.

## Schema

| Column | Type | Description |
|--------|------|-------------|
| `wikidata_id` | string | Wikidata entity ID (e.g. Q12345) |
| `name` | string | Crater name |
| `diameter_km` | float | Crater diameter (kilometres) |
| `age_mya` | float | Estimated age (millions of years ago) |
| `location` | string | Administrative or geographic location label |
| `body` | string | Planetary body (Earth, Moon, Mars, etc.) |
| `latitude` | float | Latitude (degrees) |
| `longitude` | float | Longitude (degrees) |

## Quick stats

- **4,507** craters on **39** planetary bodies
- **4,317** craters with known diameter
- **7** craters with estimated age
- **4,487** craters with coordinates
- Largest crater: Utopia Planitia (3,560 km)
- Oldest crater: Meteor Crater (49,000 Ma)
- Craters per body: Moon (1,685), Mars (1,179), Venus (671), Mercury (435), Ceres (71), Enceladus (38), 433 Eros (37), 951 Gaspra (31)

## Usage

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

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

# Craters by body
print(df["body"].value_counts())

# Largest craters
largest = df.nlargest(10, "diameter_km")[["name", "body", "diameter_km", "age_mya"]]
print(largest)

# Earth craters with coordinates
earth = df[(df["body"] == "Earth") & df["latitude"].notna()]
print(f"{len(earth):,} Earth craters with coordinates")

# Ancient craters (> 2 Ga)
ancient = df[df["age_mya"] > 2000].sort_values("age_mya", ascending=False)
print(ancient[["name", "body", "diameter_km", "age_mya"]].head(10))
```

## Data source

[Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/) SPARQL endpoint. Craters identified via
instance-of (P31) / subclass-of (P279) chain anchored at Q55818 (impact crater).
Data is community-curated by
[WikiProject Astronomy](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Astronomy)
and [WikiProject Solar System](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Solar_System).

## Update schedule

Quarterly (January, April, July, October). Re-run manually at any time to pick up
newly catalogued craters.

## Related datasets

- [ceres-craters](https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/ceres-craters) — Ceres crater catalog
- [meteorite-database](https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/meteorite-database) — Meteorite landings
- [planetary-nomenclature](https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/planetary-nomenclature) — IAU planetary feature names

## Pipeline

Source code: [juliensimon/space-datasets](https://github.com/juliensimon/space-datasets)

## Support

If you find this dataset useful, please give it a ❤️ on the [dataset page](https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/impact-craters) and share feedback in the Community tab! Also consider giving a ⭐️ to the [space-datasets](https://github.com/juliensimon/space-datasets) repo.

## Citation

```bibtex
@dataset{impact_craters,
author = {Simon, Julien},
title = {Impact Craters},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Hugging Face},
url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/impact-craters},
note = {Sourced from Wikidata (CC0)}
}
```

## License

[CC0-1.0](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) (Wikidata content is public domain)