[meteorite-list] NASA Rover Finds Meteorite on Surface of Mars
From: MexicoDoug_at_aol.com <MexicoDoug_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue Jan 18 19:36:22 2005 Message-ID: <ae.6a0744c4.2f1f057e_at_aol.com> Oops, make that 150 million square km. So 3 billion iron and 60 billion DIFFERENT stone. There is hope after ANSMET and Morocco:) En un mensaje con fecha 01/18/2005 6:25:08 PM Mexico Standard Time, MexicoDoug_at_aol.com escribe: 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. ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list ______________________________________________ Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list Received on Tue 18 Jan 2005 07:36:14 PM PST |
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