Just 114 miles from the newly found Hiawatha impact crater under the ice of northwest Greenland, lies a possible second impact crater. The 22-mile wide feature would be the second crater found under an ice sheet, and if confirmed, would be the 22nd-largest crater on Earth. A NASA-led team discovered the feature using satellite data of the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet as well as radar measurements from the airborne campaign Operation IceBridge. Although the two massive craters lie fairly close to each other, it’s thought they weren’t created at the same time. The second crater looks to be much older than Hiawatha, with features that are significantly more eroded, and it contains older ice than its neighbor.
This video is public domain and along with other supporting visualizations can be downloaded from the Scientific Visualization Studio at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13146
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Jefferson Beck
