Meteor Crater

Meteor Crater is the best-preserved meteor impact crater on Earth! More than 50,000 years ago, space and Earth came together when a huge iron-nickel meteorite, approximately 150 feet wide and weighing several hundred thousand tons, impacted an area outside of Flagstaff, Arizona, with a force 150 times greater than an atomic bomb! The result of this impact was devastation for miles and the creation of the giant bowl-shaped cavity we call Meteor Crater, which measures 550 feet deep and almost a mile wide. The Crater is large enough for 20 football games to be played simultaneously on its floor, while more than two million people could watch from the side slopes. Scientists have carried out research at the site for decades, Apollo astronauts trained there in preparation for their journeys to the Moon in the 1960s-70s, and more than a quarter million tourists visit the site each year.