jeudi 3 novembre 2016
NASA's Curiosity Rover Just Discovered an "Egg Rock" Meteorite on Mars
NASA's Curiosity rover spotted something "dark, smooth and lustrous" on the red planet in late October. Using a high-tech ChemCam instrument, which fires lasers into objects to inspect their elements, the "golf-ball-size object" was revealed to be an iron-nickel meteorite, commonly found on Earth. "Iron meteorites typically originate as core material of asteroids that melt, allowing the molten metal fraction of the asteroid's composition to sink to the center and form a core," the space agency explained.
Dubbed "Egg Rock" because of its spherical shape, scientists say the meteorite is composed of iron, nickel, and phosphorus and could have possibly fallen from the sky millions of years ago - and the Curiosity rover just found it on Oct. 27. Check out two photos of the iron-nickle meteorite below.
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