NASA Rover Finds Meteorite on Mars Surface

Associated Press ^ | 27 minutes ago | JOHN ANTCZAK,

[BenLurkin]

LOS ANGELES - In a stroke of luck, the NASA (news - web sites) rover Opportunity has discovered a basketball-size metal meteorite sitting on the surface of Mars, the mission's main scientist said Tuesday.

Opportunity came upon the meteorite last week while it was taking a look at a spacecraft shell that was jettisoned before landing after protecting the rover during its plunge through the martian atmosphere.

Tests performed during the weekend confirm it is a nickel-iron meteorite, said Steve Squyres, a Cornell University scientist who is the principal investigator for NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers mission.

"I didn't see this one coming," Squyres said. "I try very hard to anticipate the things that we might find and the things we might need to know, and be prepared for things, but an iron meteorite was not something that I was expecting."

Whether or not other meteorites are found may help scientists determine whether the martian surface is being covered by wind-blown materials or whether surface material is being stripped away, Squyres said.

Opportunity landed Jan. 24 on the Meridiani plains, halfway around the planet from where its twin, Spirit, set down in the Gusev Crater region on Jan. 3, 2004.

Opportunity, a six-wheeled robot geologist, quickly discovered rocks showing that its area of Meridiani was once soaked in water, the major scientific finding of the twin-rover mission. After that it explored rocks in a deep crater and then went to conduct an engineering study of its jettisoned heat shield. The meteorite was sitting nearby.

"I've actually told the team that we probably shouldn't linger here long because this is obviously the place at Meridiani Planum where large metal objects fall from the sky," Squyres joked.

The meteorite immediately appeared different from anything scientists had seen at either landing site.

"And then we looked at it with our infrared spectrometer and it looked like the martian sky, which is really weird," he said. The metal surface, he explained, was reflecting sky radiation instead of emitting much of its own.

During the weekend, the rover drove to the meteorite and deployed its instrument arm to confirm its origin.

The rover used its brush to remove dust but did not try to grind into the meteorite with its rock abrasion tool because of the outcome of a test conducted by the tool's maker, Honeybee Robotics of Manhattan.

"We contacted the meteorite department at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and they were generous enough to give us a piece of nickel-iron meteorite to try grinding into, and in like an hour of grinding we wore away about 25 percent of the grinding heads," Squyres said.

"We designed our rock abrasion tool for rock. We didn't design it for nickel-iron alloys."

Scientists are not interested in the meteorite itself. Rather, they want to see if other objects spotted out on the Meridiani plains are also meteorites and what that might tell them about Mars.

"You've got sort of a steady rain of meteorites on to the martian surface. It's at a very slow rate, but they are going to accumulate over time." Squyres said.

If sand is continually blowing in and being deposited on the surface, burying things and building up terrain over time, meteorites will be covered and few will be seen, he said. But if fine surface material is being continuously stripped away by the wind, coarse things like meteorites will be left behind and their accumulation will show.

"So whether you're seeing a net accumulation or a net burial of the meteorites is going to tell you something about what the erosion or deposition rates are out on the plains," he said.

[BenLurkin]

In this image released Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2005, by NASA (news - web sites) taken by the Mars rover Opportunity, a basketball-size metal meteorite can be seen in the upper right of the image while part of the rover's heatshield is seen to the upper left. Opportunity came upon the meteorite last week while it was taking a look at a spacecraft shell that was jettisoned before landing after protecting the rover during its plunge through the Martian atmosphere. Tests performed during the weekend confirm it is a nickel-iron meteorite, said Steve Squyres, a Cornell University scientist who is the principal investigator for NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers mission. (AP Photo/HO, NASA)

[KevinDavis]

[Simmy2.5]

Just keeps going and going and going!

Little surprised that Richard C. Hoagland didn't comment on this amazing discovery. Then again, I only caught him recently. Not to mention the Titan thing to talk about (and come up with a theory that Titan was colonized by aliens. Oooooooooooookay).

[RadioAstronomer]

Now that is just way cool!

[cripplecreek]

I caught something about that the other day. The guy was claiming that Titan had been terraformed at some point in the past. LOL

[NormsRevenge]

HaPPy Birthday, MARS Rovers!!!

Outgoing NASA (news - web sites) Administrator Sean O'Keefe blows out a single candle on a cake as scientists celebrated the one-year anniversary of the Mars rover Spirit landing on the red planet, during a news conference in Pasadena, California January 3, 2005. The rover Spirit, later joined by the rover Opportunity, has been collecting samples from the surface of the planet. O'Keefe will become president of Louisiana State Unitersity in Baton Rouge. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith >

[RadioAstronomer]

I am amazed how long those rovers have lasted. BTW, did you know they used Plutonium heaters? :-)

[NormsRevenge]

[NormsRevenge]

No, didn't know that, plutonium heaters, huh? Cool.

[Kevin OMalley]

I predicted that...




http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1321002/posts


First Images from Titan

Posted by Kevin OMalley to Names Ash Housewares
On News/Activism 01/14/2005 1:25:12 PM PST · 55 of 185


How long before Richard Hoagland starts talking about ancient bases and Titanic construction projects? The picture does resemble Helen Thomas's face, after all.

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[BradyLS]

Thanks for the ping!

That's a remarkable find. I wonder if the meteorite itself was actually a piece that fragmented and was ejected from another, larger impact point. It doesn't appear to have had much force in arriving at it's final resting place, judging by the way it sits right on the surface like that.

[Prime Choice]