Looking at Mars, researchers have discovered hundreds of craters that likely resulted from the impacts of a binary system, where one asteroid orbits another, like the moon orbits Earth. Via WIREDUK
Asteroids regularly strike planets and moons, so it would be expected that binary asteroids would too. Finding binary craters can be difficult though, especially among the myriad other craters on places like our moon. On Earth it is harder still, as geological processes quickly erase evidence of impacts.
Their results showed that 150 pairs appeared to be the result of binary impacts, totaling 300 individual craters. These estimates come from looking for pairs of crater shapes that would be expected following a binary asteroid collision. These include tear-drop craters, where the two craters overlap; peanut craters, where they are connected at their edges; and doublet craters, where there is a gap between the two.
In total, the number of binary craters found on Mars accounts for only about 0.5 percent of the total craters wider than 4 kilometers on the planet—far below most estimates for how many binary asteroids should be in the solar system. That could be a result of natural weathering erasing some of the impacts, or it could be that smaller crater pairs exist below 4 kilometers across.
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