Expedition Reaches Kamil Crater

A team of scientists has finally managed to brave the harsh sands of Egypt enough to reach the site of the renowned Kamil Crater, a structure that was discovered using Google Earth back in 2008.

Experts who analyzed the image said at the time that the crater was one of the best preserved structures of this sort on our planet, but they made the assessment without someone actually going there.

This was recently done by the same scientist that first discovered the feature two years ago. Vincenzo De Michele was at the time a mineralogist with the Milan-based Civico Museo di Storia Naturale, in Italy.

He worked closely with colleagues Dr Mario Di Martino, who is based at the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), also in Italy, and Dr Luigi Folco, from the Siena-based Museo Nazionale dell'Antartide.

The three experts were the main organizers of the Egyptian expedition, which started in February 2010. It took more than a year for them to obtain all the necessary documents and permissions for the trip.

The expeditionary effort lasted for more than two weeks, and included 40 scientists from Italy and Egypt. The collaboration took place as part of the 2009 Italian-Egyptian Year of Science and Technology (EISY).

The work, which also benefited from extensive support provided by locals, was partially funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), through the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) program.

According to the researchers, close analysis of Kamil Crater revealed some fairly interesting data on how metallic meteorites behave as they enter Earth's atmosphere, and begin experiencing drag.

Based on studies of the landscape feature, it would appear that the meteorite struck the ground sometime in the past few thousand years and that it impacted the ground at nearly 12,000 kilometers per hour.

It is now believed that the space object was made entirely out of iron, that it had a diameter of 1.3 meters, and also that it had a weight of about 10 tons, AlphaGalileo reports. 

“This demonstrates that metallic meteorites having a mass on the order of 10 tones do not break up in the atmosphere, and instead explode when they reach the ground and produce a crater,” explains Dr Detlef Koschny, who is the head of the SSA Program's Near Earth Objects (NEO) segment.

“We are still determining the geochronology of the impact site, but the crater is certainly less than ten thousand years old – and potentially less than a few thousand,” explains Dr Folco.

“The impact may even have been observed by humans, and archaeological investigations at nearby ancient settlements may help fix the date,” he concludes.