This impact crater is only about 5.5 meters (18 feet) across – tiny compared to the giant basins that scar most planetary bodies. This type of bowl-shaped crater is called a simple crater. It’s “simple” compared to larger craters that have terraces, central peaks and rings, and other, more complex, shapes.
Why should we care about such a small, plain crater? One reason is that it’s extremely young. The large craters we see on Mars are millions to several billion years old, but this crater formed between January 2006 and May 2008. That means it was only a few months to a few years old when HiRISE observed it. We know this because we have been studying Mars with multiple missions over a long time period, and we can compare images of the same area and detect changes. In this case, the Context camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took an image that had a dark spot in it.