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Intact Impact Crater Unearthed in China

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Scientists have identified an impact crater formed in a granite mountain, which is covered by a dense weathered crust in southern China. The Jinlin Crater, situated in Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province, is among approximately 200 craters recognized worldwide and is estimated to be less than 11,700 years old.

Panoramic aerial drone image of Jinlin Crater taken on May 12, 2025. Image credit: Chen et al., doi: 10.1063/5.0301625.

Throughout Earth’s geological history, a variety of impact craters have emerged.

Nevertheless, due to tectonic movements and significant surface weathering, many ancient craters have been eroded, distorted, or covered.

Currently, around 200 impact craters have been documented globally.

Only four of these impact craters have been reported in China, all of which are in the northeastern region.

In contrast, southern China experiences a tropical to subtropical monsoon climate, with high rainfall, humidity, and temperatures that promote substantial chemical weathering.

The newly found impact structure, referred to as Jinlin Crater, is located in the low mountains and hills of northwestern Guangdong province, adjacent to Jinlin Waterside Village in Deqing County, Zhaoqing City.

With a diameter of 900 m, it stands as the largest known impact crater of the modern Holocene, significantly surpassing the 300 m Maka crater, which was previously the largest identified Holocene impact structure.

“This discovery indicates that the scale of small extraterrestrial object impacts on Earth during the Holocene is much greater than previously known,” remarked Dr. Ming Chen, a researcher at the Hyperbaric Science and Technology Center.

In this instance, the “small” impactor is believed to be a meteorite, rather than a comet, which would have resulted in a crater no less than 10 km wide.

However, Chen and his team have not yet established if the meteorite was composed of iron or stone.

One of the most intriguing aspects of this crater is its remarkable preservation, especially given the monsoons, heavy rainfall, and high humidity conditions of the region, which are typically conducive to erosion.

Within the granite layers that shield and conserve that impact structure, researchers uncovered numerous quartz fragments that exhibit distinctive microscopic characteristics known as planar deformation features. Geologists utilize these as indicators of some form of impact.

“On Earth, quartz planar deformation features can only be formed by intense shock waves generated from celestial body collisions, with formation pressures between 10 to 35 gigapascals. This shock effect cannot be replicated by geological processes on Earth,” explained Dr. Chen.

“It is widely accepted that over Earth’s history, every point on the Earth’s surface has experienced impacts from extraterrestrial objects with roughly equal probability.”

“However, geological variations have led to different erosion rates of these historical impact markers, with some vanishing completely.”

“This underscores the significance of the Jinlin Crater discovery.”

“Impact craters serve as genuine records of Earth’s impact history.”

Uncovering Earth impact craters can furnish us with a more objective basis for comprehending the distribution, geological evolution, and impact history and regulation of small extraterrestrial objects.

For more details, refer to the team’s paper published in the Journal on October 15, 2025, titled Matter and radiation at the limit.

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Ming Chen et al. 2026. Jinlin Crater, Guangdong, China: Impact origin confirmed. Matarajith. extreme 11, 013001; doi: 10.1063/5.0301625

Source: www.sci.news

Southern Impact Reveals Magma Ocean in Moon’s Largest Crater: Study

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Approximately 4.3 billion years ago, during the early formation of our solar system, a massive asteroid collided with the far side of the moon, resulting in the creation of the South Pole-Aitken Basin—an enormous crater. This feature, the largest on the moon, spans over 1,200 miles in length and 1,000 miles in width. Its rectangular shape is attributed to a glancing impact rather than a direct hit. Challenging previous beliefs that the basin was formed by an asteroid coming from the south, recent research indicates that the narrowing shape of the basin towards the south suggests an impact from the north.

The South Pole-Aitken Impact Basin on the far side of the Moon was formed by a southward impact. Image credit: Jeff Andrews-Hanna / University of Arizona / NASA / National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

“The downstream edge of the basin should have a thick layer of material that was excavated from the moon’s interior by the impact, while the upper edge should not,” explained Dr. Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona.

“This suggests that the Artemis mission will target the downrange rim of the basin, an ideal site to examine the moon’s largest and oldest impact basins, where most of the ejecta, consisting of material from deep within the moon, are likely to be gathered.”

Historically, it has been believed that early moons were molten due to the energy released during their formation, resulting in a magma ocean that enveloped the entire moon.

As this magma ocean solidified, heavy minerals settled to create the Moon’s mantle, while lighter minerals floated upwards to form the Earth’s crust.

Nevertheless, certain elements were not incorporated into the solid mantle and crust, but instead became concentrated in the last liquid remnants of the magma ocean.

These “residual” elements, including potassium, rare earth elements, and phosphorus, are collectively known as KREEP.

Dr. Andrews-Hanna and his team noted that these elements appear to be especially abundant on the moon’s near side.

“If you’ve ever frozen a can of soda, you might have noticed that high fructose corn syrup doesn’t freeze all the way through and instead accumulates at the bottom of the liquid,” remarked Dr. Andrews-Hanna.

“We believe a similar phenomenon occurred on the moon with KREEP.”

“Over millions of years, as it cooled, the magma ocean crystallized into the crust and mantle.”

“Eventually, only a small amount of liquid remained trapped between the mantle and the crust, which is this KREEP-rich material.”

“The abundance of KREEP’s heat-producing elements somehow concentrated on the moon’s near side, causing it to heat up and initiate intense volcanic activity, thus creating the dark volcanic plains visible from Earth.”

“However, the process by which this KREEP-rich material became concentrated on the near side and how it evolved remains an enigma.”

“The moon’s crust is considerably thicker on the far side compared to the near side that faces Earth, a discrepancy that continues to puzzle scientists.”

“This asymmetry influences various aspects of the moon’s development, including the final stages of the magma ocean.”

“Our hypothesis posits that as the far side’s crust thickened, the underlying magma ocean was forced outward, akin to squeezing toothpaste from a tube, causing most of it to accumulate on the near side.”

A recent investigation of the Antarctic Aitken Basin has uncovered unexpected asymmetries supporting this scenario. The western ejecta blanket is rich in radioactive thorium, while the eastern side is not.

This indicates that the rift left by the impact formed a conduit through the moon’s crust, near the boundary separating the “normal” crust from the underlying layers that contain the final remnants of the KREEP-rich magma ocean.

“Our research shows that the distribution and composition of these materials align with predictions derived from modeling the later stages of magma ocean evolution,” stated Dr. Andrews-Hanna.

“The last remnants of the Moon’s magma ocean have reached the near side, where the concentration of radioactive elements is at its peak.”

“However, prior to this, there may have been a thin, patchy layer of magma ocean beneath parts of the far side, explaining the presence of radioactive ejecta on one flank of the Antarctic Aitken Basin.”

For further information, refer to the study published in the journal Nature.

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JC Andrews-Hanna et al. 2025. The southern impact excavated a magma ocean in the Moon’s South Pole Aitken Basin. Nature 646, 297-302; doi: 10.1038/s41586-025-09582-y

Source: www.sci.news

The Formation of the Moon’s Largest Crater Was Surprising

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The Antarctic Aitken Basin (the predominantly blue region in the center of this topographic representation) is an impact feature roughly 2500 kilometers in diameter, covered by smaller craters.

NASA/GSFC/MIT

An in-depth investigation of its morphology reveals that the moon’s oldest and largest crater formed differently than previously believed, altering our understanding of lunar history.

The South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin emerged around 4.3 billion years ago, occurring hundreds of millions of years after the moon’s initial formation. Scientists theorize it was created when a colossal asteroid grazed the moon’s surface, producing a crater thousands of kilometers wide and 12 kilometers deep.

This crater, located on the moon’s far side, displays a substantial accumulation of ancient debris near its northern edge. This debris pattern aligns with what would be expected if an asteroid struck the Earth from a southerly trajectory, below the South Pole.

However, new findings indicate a different scenario. Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna from The University of Arizona and his team discovered that the crater narrows towards the south. Andrews-Hanna noted that this teardrop shape implies the asteroid originated from the north, with the cataclysmic impact occurring from the opposite direction.

Mapping the basin’s shape is challenging due to the erosion of its ancient boundaries from later impacts. “We traced the contours of the Antarctic Aitken Basin using every conceivable method,” states Andrews-Hanna. “Models of topography, gravity, and crustal thickness were employed. We explored various approaches for tracing the basin, but with every method, it consistently tapered to the south.”

The researchers then contrasted its shape to well-studied craters on other celestial bodies, such as Mars’ Hellas and Utopia Craters. This comparison has provided clearer geological evidence on how these craters formed, leading them to conclude that the SPA basin’s shape likely resulted from an asteroid impacting from the north.

This new understanding will significantly affect how the moon’s internal material is distributed, aiding scientists in comprehending the moon’s cooling process from a massive ocean of magma during its formative years. It also suggests that some rocks around the SPA basin’s perimeter originate from the moon’s deep interior, which remains otherwise inaccessible.

This insight will enhance NASA’s forthcoming Artemis III mission, which aims to deploy astronauts to the SPA basin’s edge in search of potential water ice, as highlighted by Mahesh Anand from the Open University, UK. “This will provide opportunities to learn more about the moon’s interior, despite the lack of available samples,” he adds. “It’s a significant advantage.”

Ultimately, however, the true nature of the crater’s formation will only be clarified when samples from the SPA basin are returned to Earth, according to Anand.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

New Research Confirms Multiple Instances of Water Activity in Jezero Crater

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Minerals constitute the building blocks of rocks, and the specific minerals and their chemical compositions reveal significant insights into rock formation and history. On Mars, NASA’s dedicated rover, equipped with X-ray lithochemistry (PIXL) instruments, produces geochemical maps of rock surfaces. A recent study examined over 90,000 chemical analyses collected by PIXL during its first 1,100 days on Mars, revealing that the minerals in Jezero Crater interact with various types of liquids over time. result This will be published in Journal of Geophysics: Planets.

This image from NASA’s Mars reconnaissance orbiter showcases the Jezero Crater on Mars. Image credits: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/MSSS/JHU-APL.

In this research, Eleanor Moreland, a Rice University graduate student, along with her team, utilized mineral identification through stoichiometry (MIST) algorithms to analyze PIXL data.

PIXL determines the chemical composition by bombarding Martian rocks with X-rays, yielding the most comprehensive geochemical measurements ever obtained from another planet.

“The minerals identified in Jezero Crater through MIST indicate that these volcanic rocks interacted with liquid water multiple times throughout Mars’ history, suggesting the potential for habitable conditions,” Moreland stated.

Minerals form under specific environmental conditions, such as temperature, pH, and the chemical composition of fluids, making them reliable narrators of planetary history.

Within Jezero Crater, 24 mineral species illustrate the volcanic characteristics of the Martian surface and their interactions with water over time.

Water chemically alters rocks, producing salt or clay minerals, with the specific minerals formed depending on environmental variables.

The minerals discovered in the crater showcase three different types of liquid interactions, each indicating distinct possibilities for habitability.

The first mineral suite, featuring green arilite, hizingerite, and ferroaluminoceradonite, shows localized high-temperature acidic fluids present only in crater bedrock, interpreted as among the oldest rocks studied.

The water involved in this scenario is regarded as the most conducive to life, given that research on Earth suggests high temperatures and low pH can harm biological structures.

“These hot, acidic conditions present the toughest challenges to life,” commented Kirsten Siebach, a researcher at Rice University.

“However, on Earth, life can thrive in extreme environments such as the acidic waters of Yellowstone, so this doesn’t negate the possibility of habitability.”

The second mineral suite favors more hospitable conditions and indicates a medium neutral fluid present over larger areas.

Minerals like Minnesotaite and Clinoptilolite were detected on both the crater floor and fan area, forming at lower temperatures with neutral pH, while Clinoptilolite was restricted to the crater floor.

Lastly, the third category represents a cold alkaline liquid, considered highly habitable from a modern Earth perspective.

Sepiolite, a common mineral change on Earth, was found to form under moderate temperature and alkaline conditions, widely distributed across all units explored by the rover.

The presence of sepiolite in all these units indicates multiple episodes of liquid water contributing to habitable conditions in Jezero Crater.

“These minerals demonstrate that Jezero Crater has undergone a transition from harsher, hotter, acidic liquid conditions to more neutral and alkaline environments over time.

Given that Mars samples cannot be prepared or scanned as accurately as Earth samples, the team developed an uncertainty propagation model to enhance the findings.

Using a statistical approach, MIST repeatedly assessed mineral identification while considering potential errors, analogous to how meteorologists predict hurricane paths by utilizing numerous models.

“Error analysis enables us to assign confidence levels to all mineral identifications,” Moreland remarked.

“MIST assists not just with the scientific and decision-making processes of Mars 2020, but also establishes a mineralogical archive of Jezero Crater, which will be invaluable if samples are returned to Earth.”

The findings affirm that Jezero Crater, once home to an ancient lake, has experienced a complex, dynamic aqueous history.

Each new mineral discovery brings us closer to determining whether Mars has ever supported life, while also refining strategies for sample collection and return.

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Eleanor L. Moreland et al. 2025. Multiple episodes of fluid changes in Jezero Crater indicated by the identification of MIST minerals in PIXL XRF data from the first 1100 SOL of the Mars 2020 mission. Journal of Geophysics: Planets 130 (9): e2024je008797; doi: 10.1029/2024je008797

Source: www.sci.news

Turkmenistan’s “Gate of Hell” Crater: Burning for 40 Years Without Explanation

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Fires typically consume fuel over hours, days, or even weeks. However, certain underground fossil fuel deposits can sustain a blaze for decades.

The gas crater in Darvaza, famously known as the “Gate of Hell,” has been burning for a remarkable 40 years within a 60-meter-wide (196 feet) pit located in Turkmenistan’s Karakham Desert.

The crater’s origin is a topic of debate. Some claim it resulted from an unauthorized Soviet gas drilling operation in the 1970s that inadvertently trapped an underground pocket of natural gas; others believe it was formed naturally in the 1960s.

Regardless of its origins, geologists detected methane leaking from the crater and attempted to ignite the gas to prevent environmental disasters. They expected it to extinguish within weeks, yet it has continued to burn for decades.

The Darvaza gas Crater is a 60m (196 feet) pit in the Karakham Desert in Turkmenistan. – Photo Credit: Getty Images

This crater sits atop extensive oil and gas fields that traverse Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, likely linked to a vast underground reservoir of methane, which fuels the fire almost indefinitely.

In 2013, Canadian explorer George Crunis embarked on an expedition to study the crater. Dressed in a heat-resistant suit, he descended to the crater’s depths to collect soil samples and found simple organisms capable of surviving in the extreme conditions at the bottom.

While the Gate of Hell may be the most famous fire, it is not the oldest. Underground coal seams can sustain fires for centuries.

One coal fire beneath Mount Wingen in Australia has been ablaze for over 5,000 years. Such fires might continue indefinitely until the vast underground fuel supply is depleted.

This article addresses the question posed by Dennis McCann of Derby: “What are the Gates of Hell, and why do they keep burning?”

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Source: www.sciencefocus.com

Ancient Shock Crater Discovered in Australia, Estimated to be 34.7 Billion Years Old

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A team of geologists from Curtin University discovered clear evidence of a high-speed impact that occurred 3.47 billion years ago (Archean EON) in the heart of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. This discovery makes it the oldest impact crater found on Earth, surpassing the previous record of 2.2 billion years.

Grind cones from the Arctic Dome in the heart of Australia’s Pilbara region. Image credit: Curtin University.

“When more than a million craters with diameters exceeding 1 km and over 40 km, more than 100 km, the moon holds an exquisite record of the intense artillery fire that the body of the inner solar system has endured during the first billion years of its history.”

“On Earth, this early impact record appears to reflect the destructive efficiency of erosion and subduction, bringing the primary skin back to the convection mantle.”

“Nevertheless, the oldest part of many cratons, the ancient (4-2.5 billion years ago) nuclei of the continent formed 3.5 billion years ago, must maintain evidence of impact fluxes beyond similar regions of the moon of comparable age.”

“However, the oldest recognized terrestrial impact structure in Yarabuba, Western Australia dates 2.23 billion years ago. Where are Archean Craters?”

Professor Johnson and his co-authors investigated the Archiunlock Formation at the Arctic Dome in the Pilbara region and discovered evidence affecting major metstones 3.5 billion years ago.

“This discovery has challenged our previous assumptions about the ancient history of our planet,” Professor Johnson said.

Researchers discovered Archean Crater thanks to crushed cones. This is a unique rock formation that has only formed under the intense pressure of the Metstone strike.

The crushed cone at the site, about 40 km west of the marble bar, was formed when metstones over 36,000 km/h were pounded into the area.

This was a major planetary event, with craters over 100 km wide sending fragments flying around the world.

“We know that in the early solar systems, seeing the moon is common,” Professor Johnson said.

“To date, the absence of truly ancient craters means they are largely ignored by geologists.

“This study provides an important part of the puzzle of Earth’s impact history and suggests that there may be many other ancient craters that can be discovered over time.”

“The discovery shed new light on the way metstones formed the early environment of the Earth,” said Chris Kirkland, a professor at Curtin University.

“Discovering this impact and finding more from the same period can explain a lot about how life began, as impact craters created an environment that is friendly to microbial life, such as heated pools.”

“It also fundamentally refines our understanding of the formation of the earth’s crust. The enormous amount of energy from this impact may have played a role in shaping the early Earth’s crust by pushing part of the Earth’s crust underneath another or rising from deeper into the Earth’s mantle towards the surface.

“It may have contributed to the formation of the craton, the large, stable land that formed the foundation of the continent.”

Discoveries are reported in a paper In the journal Natural Communication.

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CL Kirkland et al. 2025. The Old Archian Impact Crater in Pyrabara Craton, Western Australia. Nut commune 16, 2224; doi:10.1038/s41467-025-57558-3

Source: www.sci.news

Carbonate minerals in Gale Crater reveal insights into the climate of ancient Mars

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Carbonate minerals are an integral part of the carbon and water cycles, both of which are implicated in habitability, making them of particular interest in paleoenvironmental studies. In the new study, planetary scientists focused on carbon and oxygen isotope measurements of carbonate minerals detected by NASA’s Curiosity rover inside Mars’ Gale Crater.

An artist’s concept of an early Mars with liquid water (blue area) on its surface. Image credit: NASA / MAVEN / Lunar and Planetary Institute.

Isotopes are versions of an element that have different masses. As the water evaporates, the lighter ones, carbon and oxygen, are more likely to escape into the atmosphere, while the heavier ones are more likely to be left behind, accumulating in larger quantities, and in this case eventually incorporated into carbonate rocks.

Scientists are interested in carbonates because they have been shown to act as climate records.

These minerals may retain traces of the environment in which they formed, such as the temperature and acidity of the water and the composition of the water and atmosphere.

“The isotopic values ​​of these carbonates indicate extreme amounts of evaporation, suggesting that these carbonates likely formed in climates where only ephemeral liquid water could exist. ‘ said Dr. David Burt, a researcher at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

“Our samples do not match an ancient environment in which life (biosphere) existed on the surface of Mars. However, it does not match the subterranean biosphere or the surface environment that began and ended before these carbonates formed. This does not exclude the possibility of a biosphere.

Dr. Burt and his colleagues propose two formation mechanisms for the carbonates found in Gale Crater.

In the first scenario, carbonates form through a series of dry-wet cycles within the crater.

In the second, carbonates form in extremely salty water under cold ice-forming (cryogenic) conditions inside the crater.

“These formation mechanisms represent two different climate regimes that could indicate different habitation scenarios,” said Dr. Jennifer Stern, also of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

“Wetting and drying cycles would indicate alternations between more and less habitable environments, while the extremely low temperatures in the mid-latitudes of Mars mean that most of the water is trapped in ice. “And what’s there would be very salty and unpleasant to live in.” “

These climate scenarios for ancient Mars have been previously proposed based on the presence of certain minerals, global modeling, and the identification of rock formations.

The results are the first to add isotopic evidence from rock samples to support the scenario.

The heavy isotope values of carbonates on Mars are significantly higher than carbonate minerals observed on Earth, and are the heaviest carbon and oxygen isotope values ​​ever recorded in Martian material.

In fact, both wet-dry and cold-saline climates are required to form carbonates, which are extremely rich in heavy carbon and oxygen.

“The fact that these carbon and oxygen isotope values ​​are higher than any other measured on Earth or Mars indicates that the process is extreme,” Dr. Burt said.

“While evaporation can cause significant oxygen isotope changes on Earth, the changes measured in this study were two to three times larger.”

“This means two things: (i) there was an extreme degree of evaporation that made these isotope values ​​very heavy, and (ii) these heavier values ​​were conserved so that the lighter isotopes The process that generated the body value must have significantly reduced its size.””

team’s paper Published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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David G. Burt others. 2024. High concentrations of carbon and oxygen isotopes in carbonate-derived CO2 At Gale Crater on Mars. PNAS 121 (42): e2321342121;doi: 10.1073/pnas.2321342121

This article is based on a press release provided by NASA.

Source: www.sci.news

Lunar samples shed light on the formation of the Moon’s largest crater

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Lunar samples collected by NASA's Apollo missions continue to enable new discoveries.

NASA/ESA

The Moon's largest crater is thought to have formed 4.338 billion years ago when a huge rock struck the lunar surface, leaving behind a swirling pool of magma, suggesting that Earth was experiencing extreme cosmic upheaval at the same time.

Chemical analysis of tiny zircon crystals found in lunar samples revealed that many of them solidified from magma about 4.3 billion years ago, but without measuring whether they all formed at precisely the same time, there was no way to know for sure whether many small impacts or one giant one melted the lunar crust into magma.

Melanie Balboni Balboni and her colleagues at Arizona State University solved this problem by measuring with extreme precision the ages of 10 zircon crystals that were brought back to Earth as part of NASA's Apollo missions. “To do this kind of dating, you have to melt the zircon,” Balboni says. “The lunar material is so precious, and there are so few reliable labs in the world that can do that, so no one has dared to do it. When I first did it, I was so scared.”

The researchers found that the crystals all formed at the same time, 4.338 billion years ago, which indicates that they likely formed in one giant impact. The same impact that created these crystals probably also formed the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the largest crater on the Moon, unless that impact crater was subsequently obscured by shifting sand or other impactors, Balboni says.

Not only is this a pivotal event in the history of the Moon, but it also tells us something about the space environment on Earth at that time. “The Moon is a very small object compared to Earth, so it was very likely that something very big struck Earth at that time,” Balboni said. “That big rock could have left behind cosmic gifts, like water, that might have helped the birth of life.”

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Possibly the First Crater Found on Jupiter’s Moon Io

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This could be the first impact crater discovered on Io

NASA/JPL-California Institute of Technology/Kevin M. Gill, CC BY 2.0

Amateur astronomers may have discovered the first crater ever discovered on Jupiter’s moon Io. Io has never seen an impact crater before because it is very volcanically active and eruptions tend to erase impact craters.

Swedish amateur astronomer Jesper Sandberg discovered the apparent crater while examining archival images from the Galileo spacecraft, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. It is relatively small, only about 100 meters in diameter, and is located on a large, flat area.

Source: www.newscientist.com