Blast From the Past: Arizona’s Meteor Crater

The “young” and well-preserved crater helps scientists understand cratering processes on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system.

This image originally appeared in the NASA Earth Observatory story Blast From the Past: Arizona’s Meteor Crater.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Kathryn Hansen.

Published July 4, 2025
Data acquired May 16, 2021