Nikumaroro Atoll

It is one of the most famous patches of coral outside of the Great Barrier Reef. Stretching a mere 7.5 kilometers (4.7 miles) by 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) and surrounded by deep ocean, it is barely a speck on world maps. Though uninhabited today, Nikumaroro atoll is noteworthy for someone who likely had a short and ill-fated residence there: Amelia Earhart.

Nearly 1,000 miles from Fiji, halfway between Australia and Hawaii, this South Pacific island is essentially a sandbar atop a coral reef atop a subsiding deep-sea volcano. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired a natural-color image of the tiny island on July 28, 2014.

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

James Webb Space Telescope

Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…

Perseverance Rover

This rover and its aerial sidekick were assigned to study the geology of Mars and seek signs of ancient microbial…

Parker Solar Probe

On a mission to “touch the Sun,” NASA's Parker Solar Probe became the first spacecraft to fly through the corona…

Juno

NASA’s Juno spacecraft entered orbit around Jupiter in 2016, the first explorer to peer below the planet's dense clouds to…