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17 Jun 2002
A team of scientists believes they have discovered a chain of impact craters in the central African country of Chad that suggests ancient Earth may have been hit by a large, fragmented comet or asteroid similar to the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet that slammed into Jupiter in 1994. The craters were discovered in radar images of the Earth taken by the Spaceborne Imaging Radar C/X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) that flew on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in April and October of 1994. The images reveal two new craters adjacent to a previously known impact site, called Aorounga, in northern Chad.
The most prominent of the craters, called Aorounga South, has been observed in Landsat satellite-based images and Space Shuttle hand-held photos, and has been verified by ground work. The other two craters, Aorounga Central and Aorounga North, have not yet been yet scientifically confirmed through fieldwork.
"The Aorounga craters are only the second chain of large craters known on Earth, and were apparently formed by the break-up of a large comet or asteroid prior to impact," said Adriana Ocampo, a geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. "With ground confirmation, this second chain will provide valuable data on the nature and origin of small bodies that cross Earth's orbit."
Ocampo is presenting her findings this week at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, TX.
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