Astronauts have been getting a lesson in geology at a crater in Nunavut's High Arctic. The Haughton is a well preserved meteor impact crater on Devon Island. It's about 23 kilometres in diameter, and is about 20 to 40 million years old. University of Western Ontario geologist Dr. Gordon Osinski leads a field camp at the Haughton Crater. Read more
Drill Hill is a circular mound of impact breccia about a kilometre in diameter, one of many such mounds that litter the floor of Haughton Crater. It's a large pile of rock rubble, initially created 39 million years ago when a massive bolide slammed into the Earth, and is now intermixed with ice. Read more
Devon Island, the bulk of which straddles 75 degrees North latitude, well above the Arctic Circle, is a geologic wonderland. Today it is mostly polar desert. But it wasnt always so. Its tale begins about 2.5 billion years ago. Read more
For the second year in a row, a bright yellow Humvee truck traversed across the High Arctic, heading for the Haughton-Mars Project Research Station on Devon Island. The Mars Institute's Moon-1 Humvee Rover is an old military ambulance similar to those used in the Gulf War, refurbished to fit the needs of the project. It simulates a space rover driven by astronauts, and the High Arctic journey was to field test long rover drives. Read more
Isotopes show microbes moved into meteorite crater
Heat-loving bacteria quickly colonised the shattered rock and boiling water left behind when a huge meteorite smashed into a remote part of what is now Devon Island in Canada's frozen north, scientists have shown. The discovery could help in the search for ancient life on Mars, and suggests future missions there should take a look at meteorite impact craters to see if they contain chemical traces that can only be made by living things. Read more
"Evidence of widespread microbial activity" in the Canadian crater, the team says, has "shown for the first time that a crater was pervasively colonized by microbes, and that colonisation of over 20 cubic kilometres of impact rock was rapid, within 10,000 years after impact, while the rock was still warm."
Scientists studying an ancient meteorite crash site in the Canadian Arctic have detected traces of microbes that point to the key role played by impact craters in the evolution of life on Earth and could help determine whether life once existed on Mars. The discovery - hailed by an 11-member team of researchers from Canada, Britain, the U.S. and Sweden as a scientific "first" - was made at Devon Island's famous Haughton Crater, a uniquely dry and desolate geological gem probed frequently by experts from NASA because of its Mars-like features. Read more
Haughton impact crater is located on Devon Island, Nunavut in far northern Canada. It is about 23 kilometres in diameter and formed about 39 million years ago (late Eocene). The impacting object is estimated to have been approximately two kilometres in diameter. Devon Island itself is composed of Paleozoic shale and siltstone overlying gneissic bedrock. When the crater formed, the shale and siltstone were peeled back to expose the basement; material from as deep as 1700 metres has been identified. Read more
The 23 kilometres in diameter Haughton impact crater is located on Devon Island, Nunavut in far northern Canada. It formed about 39 million years ago (late Eocene). The impacting object is estimated to have been approximately two kilometres in diameter.