Ailinginae
- ISS006-E-5967
- 08 December 2002
- 01:32 UTC
Ailinginae is a small, narrow, rectangular atoll formation located 13 km southwest from Rongelap Atoll at the northern end of the Ralik Chain. Measuring around 27 km in length and up to 9 km across, the atoll consists of a broad reef flat with around 25 islets located mostly on its southern and eastern sides. The total land area of these islands amounts to 2.8 km². They are vegetated with atoll forest and scrub, grasses and some stands of Casuarina. The largest of the islands (Ribinouri and Mogiri) are around 1.8 km in length and 400 m across. (In the image the most visible islet is Knox, located in the southeast corner, measuring around 750 m across.)
Also on the southern side of the atoll are two deep passages — Mogiri Pass (leftmost of the pair of passages on the left of the image) and Eniibukku Pass — into the central lagoon of 106 km². The northern windward side of Ailinginae consists almost entirely of a wide submerged reef flat of up to 1.5 km in width.
image: earth sciences and image analysis laboratory, nasa johnson space center