juliensimon/mars-craters-robbins

Mars Crater Database (Robbins & Hynek 2012)

Part of the Planetary Science Datasets collection on Hugging Face.

The only global Mars impact crater database, containing 385,049 craters with diameter >= 1 km identified from high-resolution imagery. This is the definitive reference catalog for Mars crater studies.

Dataset description

This database was compiled by Stuart J. Robbins and Brian M. Hynek (2012) using THEMIS, CTX, and other Mars imagery. Every crater >= 1 km in diameter on the Martian surface was identified and measured, including ejecta morphology classification and depth measurements where available.

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, from MOLA topography)
ejecta_morphology_1	string	Primary ejecta morphology classification
ejecta_morphology_2	string	Secondary ejecta morphology classification
ejecta_morphology_3	string	Tertiary ejecta morphology classification
n_ejecta_layers	int64	Number of ejecta layers
size_class	string	Derived: small (<5 km), medium (5-20), large (20-100), giant (>100)

Quick stats

• 385,049 total craters
• Size distribution: 337,450 small, 36,696 medium, 10,598 large, 305 giant
• Diameter range: 1.00 -- 1088.0 km

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

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

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

# Map of large craters
large = df[df["size_class"].isin(["large", "giant"])]
plt.scatter(large["longitude_deg"], large["latitude_deg"],
            s=large["diameter_km"] / 5, alpha=0.5)
plt.xlabel("Longitude")
plt.ylabel("Latitude")
plt.title("Large Mars Craters (>20 km)")
plt.show()

Data source

Robbins, S.J. and Hynek, B.M. (2012), *A new global database of Mars impact craters >= 1 km:

1. Database creation, properties, and parameters.* Journal of Geophysical Research, 117, E05004. 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{mars_craters_robbins,
  author = {Simon, Julien},
  title = {Mars Crater Database (Robbins & Hynek 2012)},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/mars-craters-robbins},
  note = {Based on Robbins & Hynek (2012) via USGS Astrogeology}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0