4 years ago, a new island was created by an underwater volcano eruption within the South Pacific. Recently, NASA has studied this island closely and one of its scientists was able to travel there to take on the ground measurements. NASA officials believe that the island’s evolution can lead to the fact that billions of years ago how water might have shaped similar features on Mars. Therefore, the space agency started collecting satellite photos to trace how the elements were carving and clawing away on the land. The images yielded insights into how the island was eroding, but the story they told was limited. NASA might wring additional data from these pictures with the measurements taken from the bottom.
Image credit - Daily Mail
The Sea Education Association, a nonprofit group, was planning to take a group of college students and employees members to the island, and NASA was welcome to hitch a journey. Mr. Garvin, the chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, jumped at the chance, sending along Dan Slayback, an analysis scientist for NASA who had been engaged on the trouble to trace the island’s progression.
This four-year-old island is a part of Tonga and is about 500 acres in size and about 1,300 miles northeast of New Zealand. It has not given any name yet but is unofficially known as Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai that is a mixture of the names of the 2 older, uninhabited islands it sits between. Its most amazing features are a turquoise lake and a croissant-shaped ridge. These are the remnants of a cone made from hardened ash, which are about 400 feet high and spread to about one mile.
The volcanic eruption that created the island, happened in December 2014, causing ash to be up to 30,000 feet in the air and also disrupting flights. When this ash returned to the ground and became hardened after mixing with warm water, the island was formed. When the island was formed, the NASA team thought that it could not survive for more than a decade. But now after taking a sample of rocks from the island after going over it and watching at the elements of the weather, the team hopes that it will remain from decades to hundreds of years.
The Sea Education Association, a nonprofit group, was planning to take a group of college students and employees members to the island, and NASA was welcome to hitch a journey. Mr. Garvin, the chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, jumped at the chance, sending along Dan Slayback, an analysis scientist for NASA who had been engaged on the trouble to trace the island’s progression.
This four-year-old island is a part of Tonga and is about 500 acres in size and about 1,300 miles northeast of New Zealand. It has not given any name yet but is unofficially known as Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai that is a mixture of the names of the 2 older, uninhabited islands it sits between. Its most amazing features are a turquoise lake and a croissant-shaped ridge. These are the remnants of a cone made from hardened ash, which are about 400 feet high and spread to about one mile.
The volcanic eruption that created the island, happened in December 2014, causing ash to be up to 30,000 feet in the air and also disrupting flights. When this ash returned to the ground and became hardened after mixing with warm water, the island was formed. When the island was formed, the NASA team thought that it could not survive for more than a decade. But now after taking a sample of rocks from the island after going over it and watching at the elements of the weather, the team hopes that it will remain from decades to hundreds of years.
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