Curiosity Rover Finds Foot-Long Meteorite on Martian Surface:
The rock, dubbed Cacao, is made of iron and nickel, NASA says.
Cacao was first spotted on January 27, in the shadow of the Curiosity rover. The next day, Curiosity repositioned itself to better image the large rock.
It's not the first meteorite Curiosity has spotted. In 2014, the rover found an iron meteorite (nicknamed Lebanon) that measured about 6.5 feet across, and in 2016, it came across a golf ball-sized meteorite nicknamed Egg Rock on the planet's Mount Sharp.
Iron meteorites like these regularly crop up on Earth and have caused stirs throughout human history. Japanese emperors and the pharaoh Tutankhamun had weapons forged from iron meteorites.
There's no way to date the meteorites, the rover team said on Twitter, but the newly discovered rock "could have been here millions of years!"
Cacao was found on Curiosity's 3,724th sol. The rover arrived on Mars in August 2012, and since then has explored the planet's Gale Crater and Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-high mountain in the crater's center.
(Score: 2) by mrpg on Wednesday February 08, @05:55PM (2 children)
... have caused stirs throughout human history...
How come?
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Wednesday February 08, @06:41PM (1 child)
Rocks falling from the sky are weird. Sky metal is even weirder.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday February 08, @08:06PM
Couldn't the leading scientific experts build an impressive and fitting shrine around these Sky Metal objects?
Call it a museum they could.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 08, @07:10PM
So that's where my missing order from Subway went. I guess gods of war get hungry too . . .
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.