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The Aorounga Impact Crater is a crater formed by a comet or asteroid impact some several hundred million years ago in an area of the Sahara Desert of northern Chad. The crater is about 11 mi (17 km) across and was produced by a comet or asteroid about 1 mi (2 km) across. The crater may be part of a chain of multiple impact craters produced by fragments of one impacting object. The dark band in the upper right corner of the image may indicate a second impact crater. Comets or asteroids large enough to produce the Aorounga Impact Crater strike the Earth roughly once every million years. The image was obtained by SIR-C/X-SAR on the Space Shuttle Endeavour on April 11, 1994 and shows an area about 22 mi (36 km) on a side.
Image and text copyright © Astrographics. All rights reserved. Image courtesy of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. |
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