Mercury’s Caloris Basin stretches about 1,550 kilometers across
Caloris Basin is one of the solar system’s largest impact scars: a multi-ringed plain roughly 1,550 km wide, formed when a huge projectile slammed into Mercury early in its history.
MESSENGER mapped the concentric rings, lava-flooded floor, and weird “weird terrain” antipodal to the basin where shock waves focused. The hit likely cracked the crust and reshaped regional geology.
One crash can rewrite a planet. Caloris is Mercury’s calling card that giant impacts sculpted the rocky worlds.
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