[meteorite-list] NASA Rover Finds Meteorite on Surface of Mars

[MexicoDoug at aol.com]

Charly, List,

Mars has a surface area of around 50 million square  kilometers.  So, if the 
Red Rover has done a small fraction of a kilometer  around the Valley and we 
scale it up, I'd say about a billion of the metal ones,  and then another 12 
billion stonies.  (Sagan billions, not British  ones).  But so far all we know 
is that it is there is one on the  planet.  Statistics...can be 
misleading...but my jaw also fell!!!
 
Did anyone notice this statement in the article:
>Scientists are not  interested in the meteorite itself.
Ouch!!!!  So what are we, chopped  liver?  And that meteorite???

It's a coverup.  What a ratty  RAT...
They need some of you veteran cutters on staff at NASA, right Al. Al,  Bill, 
Bill, Jim, Jim, Jaime, John, Michel, Marvin, Marcin, Mike, Andi, and the  rest 
of all you who I really would mention if I just knew...Guys do your  
patriotic duty and give the next rover a hand.  Or a paw
Saludos,  Doug

En un mensaje con fecha 01/18/2005 6:05:34 PM Mexico Standard Time,  
cviau at beld.net escribe:
There must be thousands, if not millions of them just  sitting on the
surface.  Just imagine the odds.  This rover, for  all the distance it has
traveled, barely measures a walk in the park, and it  comes across a
basketball size iron meteorite?    WOWZER.

CharlyV

-----Original Message-----
From:  meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com]  On Behalf Of Ron Baalke
Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2005 6:51 PM
To:  Meteorite Mailing List
Subject: [meteorite-list] NASA Rover Finds Meteorite  on Surface of  Mars



http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/politics/10674958.htm  

NASA rover finds meteorite on surface of Mars
JOHN  ANTCZAK
Associated Press
January 18, 2005

LOS ANGELES - In a stroke  of luck, the NASA 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.

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