Mars Rover's Meteorite Discovery Triggers Questions

Story dated 20 January 2005

In all the excitement over Titan, I'll bet you'd forgotten that the Mars rovers 'Opportunity' and 'Spirit' were still roving. Opportunity has now discovered a fascinating meteorite on Mars. "The size of a basketball, the object is mostly made of iron and nickel, and is the first meteorite of any type ever identified on another planet." This is remarkable because the rock either fell recently, or has been buried until recently and thus has not had time to be oxidized by the Martian atmosphere. Or, it could mean that Mars' atmosphere is too cold and dry to oxidize anything in the past several hundred years. In any case, scientists had not expected to find meteorites like this one, so they now have some more information for their model of the Martian environment.

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Subject Matter: Science Space Exploration

posted by The Sovereign Editor | 3:45 PM

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