What are meteorite craters?

A meteorite crater is like a big hole in the ground made by something falling from space.

Imagine you're playing outside and you throw a really heavy rock at a sandbox, poof! A nice round hole appears where the rock hit. That’s kind of what happens when a meteorite hits Earth. A meteorite is a piece of a bigger rock that came all the way from space, like in a spaceship.

When a meteorite falls very fast and crashes into the ground, it creates a crater, which looks like a round hole with raised edges around it. The faster and heavier the meteorite is, the bigger the crater becomes, just like if you threw a boulder instead of a rock.

Sometimes these craters can be huge! Some are even big enough to fit whole cities inside them. Scientists study these craters to learn about space rocks and how they travel through the universe.

One famous example is the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, it was made by a meteorite that hit Earth 65 million years ago and might have caused the dinosaurs to disappear!