Photo #: ISS062-E-103112 Date: Mar. 2020 Geographic Region: NAMIBIA Feature: ROTER KAMM CRATER |
In the vastness of one of the world's oldest deserts lies a relatively recent geologic feature: the Roter Kamm crater ("Red Comb" in German). An astronaut onboard the International Space Station photographed the crater while orbiting over the Namib Desert. It is approximately 130 meters (430 feet) deep and 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) in diameter. Geologists estimate that a meteorite the size of a large motor vehicle soared across the sky and crashed into the sea of red sand dunes approximately 5 million years ago. It created an impact crater that has since been filled with orange and red sand carried in by winds. Across millions and billions of years, many meteoroids, comets, and asteroids have passed through Earth’s atmosphere and left scars on the planet in the form of impact craters. More than 100 tons of material from near-Earth objects - particles and rock fragments from asteroids and comets ranging from dust-sized to 1 meter in diameter - bombard the Earth daily. Sometimes they visibly disintegrate as meteors or “shooting stars” in the mesosphere before reaching the ground. A meteoroid capable of causing significant damage to Earth's surface occurs far less often: about once every 2000 years. Impactors large enough to cause extinction-level events on Earth - such as the Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) boundary mass extinction - reach the surface at the rate of once every few million years. |
Images: | All Available Images Low-Resolution 338k |
|
Mission: | ISS062 |
|
Roll - Frame: | E - 103112 |
|
Geographical Name: | NAMIBIA |
|
Features: | ROTER KAMM CRATER |
|
Center Lat x Lon: | 27.8S x 16.3E |
|
Film Exposure: | N=Normal exposure, U=Under exposed, O=Over exposed, F=out of Focus |
|
Percentage of Cloud Cover-CLDP: | 10 |
|
Camera:: | N8 |
|
Camera Tilt: | 36 | LO=Low Oblique, HO=High Oblique, NV=Near Vertical |
Camera Focal Length: | 200 |
|
Nadir to Photo Center Direction: | SW | The direction from the nadir to the center point, N=North, S=South, E=East, W=West |
Stereo?: | Y=Yes there is an adjacent picture of the same area, N=No there isn't |
|
Orbit Number: | |
|
Date: | 20200320 | YYYYMMDD |
Time: | 134603 | GMT HHMMSS |
Nadir Lat: | 26.5S |
Latitude of suborbital point of spacecraft |
Nadir Lon: | 18.7E |
Longitude of suborbital point of spacecraft |
Sun Azimuth: | 295 | Clockwise angle in degrees from north to the sun measured at the nadir point |
Space Craft Altitude: | 227 | nautical miles |
Sun Elevation: | 41 | Angle in degrees between the horizon and the sun, measured at the nadir point |
Land Views: | |
|
Water Views: | |
|
Atmosphere Views: | |
|
Man Made Views: | |
|
City Views: | |
|
Photo is not associated with any sequences |
NASA Home Page |
JSC Home Page |
JSC Digital Image Collection |
Earth Science & Remote Sensing |
|