NASA Drilling For Meteorite Clues In Own Backyard
USGS/NASA Langley drilling operation at Chesapeake Bay: August 2000 |
Hampton - October 2, 2000
The Department of the Interior is drilling a hole in NASA's back yard. But officials at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA, don't mind. This National Research Laboratory sits on the edge of a huge crater where both agencies are collecting geological data from an ancient extraterrestrial event.
Thirty-five million years ago, a two-mile-wide bolide (meteor or comet) hit the tip of Virginia's Eastern Shore. When it struck, the fireball reshaped the land, disrupted the existing water table, and dislodged deeper sediment to higher levels across a 56- mile-wide area.
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