opportunity strikes iron

The Mars Exploration Rover Opportunty has found a meteorite on Mars. This is the first meteorite ever discovered on another planet. Wild.

The science team suggested about a week ago that this rock might be a meteorite because of the pitted appearnce and the mini-TES spectrum. They finally drove up close enough to use the APXS and Mössbauer which confirmed it.

You can read the full press release here. Other than this ;-), not much to report since my last MER update.

update:I found a nice Pancam image and a couple of decent Microscopic Imager pictures in the raw archives. Pancam, MI 1, and MI 2 Posted by asa at January 19, 2005 10:27 PM