[meteorite-list] Mars Rover's Meteorite Discovery Triggers Questions

From: fcressy <fcressy_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Jan 20 17:42:28 2005
Message-ID: <000401c4ff41$8eae6f10$8070f504_at_g10fb>

Hi Ron, Mark and all,

The following is from the article Ron posted earlier today:

> "We've seen lots of little rocks on the plains, but with this one
> exception -- and Bounce Rock -- we've never stopped to look at one,"
> Squyres told SPACE.com.
> In April of last year, the rover studied "Bounce Rock", an odd,
> football-sized object that Opportunity struck while bouncing to a stop
> inside protective airbags on landing day over a year ago. Scientists
> noted at the time that the rock's elemental composition was unlike
> anything seen on Mars before, with similarities to a meteorite tagged
> EETA79001 that was found in Antarctica in 1979.

This article certainally triggered a question from me as noted in the
subject header. Is the author of this article suggesting that "Bounce" rock
might be a meteorite???
EETA79001 is a Basaltic Shergottite so finding a rock on Mars that that has
similarities to it shouldn't seem too unusual. At first I thought the
author was a bit mixed up but Mark Bostick posted the following quoted from
a NASA scientist:

"Isn't it neat that the MER Opportunity rover found an iron meteorite on
Mars. One of the MER team members with the Mossbauer spectrometer instrument
works in our research group. He showed me the data and the nickel-iron is a
dead ringer for kamacite and they even know the nickel
concentration fairly accurately. Actually this is the second meteorite found
on the mission. The first one was the rock that had identical chemical
composition to EETA79001."

Am I missing something here?

A bit perplexed,
Frank
Received on Thu 20 Jan 2005 05:36:27 PM PST