Check out this image of Tenoumer Crater - one of the best-preserved craters on Earth

This image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission shows Tenoumer Crater, one of the best-preserved craters on Earth that lies within the Sahara Desert.

Nearly a perfect circle, the crater (visible in the centre) is 1.9 kilometres wide and sports a rim 100 meters high. The picture was captured on 16 May 2022, and shared by the European Space Agency (ESA) on Asteroid Day. The picture shows the arid landscape surrounding the crater which appears in varying shades of brown, tan and orange.

Geologists long debated whether the Tenoumer Crater in Mauritania was formed by a volcano or meteorite. Scattered rocks around the crater, similar to basalt, created the impression of an ancient volcano. But closer exanimation of the structure revealed the crater's hardened ‘lava’ was actually rock that had melted by a meteorite impact.

While the crater sits in a vast plain of rocks that were deposited hundreds of millions of years before the first dinosaurs walked Earth, the crater is much younger, ranging in age between 10,000 and 30,000 years old, according to ESA.

Small crater, big history 📜Deep within the Sahara Desert lies one of the best-preserved craters on Earth. 👉 On #AsteroidDay, the @CopernicusEU #Sentinel2 mission takes us over the almost-perfectly circular Tenoumer Crater in Mauritania https://t.co/SeUDRueeqb pic.twitter.com/737Oju24XJ

— ESA EarthObservation (@ESA_EO) June 30, 2022

For the unversed, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission is based on a constellation of two identical satellites in the same orbit. The mission mainly provides information for agricultural and forestry practices and for helping manage food security.