Curosity Day 640 Meteorite

[BMAONE23]

On day 640 images from Mars Rover Curosity there appears to be 3 meteorites within close proxcimity, one is quite large

Larger image

[Chris Peterson]

On day 640 images from Mars Rover Curosity there appears to be 3 meteorites within close proxcimity, one is quite large

Larger image

Interesting. These don't look much like meteorites we'd find on Earth at all. I hope they stop and do a bit of analysis.

[BDanielMayfield]

They are interesting. They look like meteorites because of the partially melted appearance of their surfaces, called ablation due to heating during atmospheric passage, if I remember right. But could they also have been ejecta from one of Mars' volcanoes?

Bruce

[geckzilla]

I follow Mick on Flickr and he often processes these images before or at the same time as others get to them. Anyway, it's convenient to share images here from Flickr. Highest resolution link is here. It looks pristine. Makes me want to touch it!

MSL - Sol640 by Mick Hyde, on Flickr

[geckzilla]

Some closeups! high res


MSL_Sol640_ChemcamRMI_M100_Color_mosaic_meteorite1 by Epicl2009, on Flickr

[Nitpicker]

It is also strongly reminiscent of the wind and water sculpted rock formations around the beaches of Sydney. It makes me think of my childhood.

[geckzilla]

The seam or crack shaped somewhat like a 3 from this angle is interesting. It's in the third circle from the left in the closeups and you can see it in the other picture too.

[geckzilla]

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA18387

Original Caption Released with Image:

This rock encountered by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is an iron meteorite called "Lebanon," similar in shape and luster to iron meteorites found on Mars by the previous generation of rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. Lebanon is about 2 yards or 2 meters wide (left to right, from this angle). The smaller piece in the foreground is called "Lebanon B."

This view combines a series of high-resolution circular images taken by the Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) of Curiosity's Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument with color and context from rover's Mast Camera (Mastcam). The component images were taken during the 640th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars (May 25, 2014).

The imaging shows angular shaped cavities on the surface of the rock. One possible explanation is that they resulted from preferential erosion along crystalline boundaries within the metal of the rock. Another possibility is that these cavities once contained olivine crystals, which can be found in a rare type of stony-iron meteorites called pallasites, thought to have been formed near the core-mantle boundary within an asteroid.

Iron meteorites are not rare among meteorites found on Earth, but they are less common than stony meteorites. On Mars, iron meteorites dominate the small number of meteorites that have been found. Part of the explanation could come from the resistance of iron meteorites to erosion processes on Mars.

ChemCam is one of 10 instruments in Curiosity's science payload. The U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, developed ChemCam in partnership with scientists and engineers funded by the French national space agency (CNES), the University of Toulouse and the French national research agency (CNRS). More information about ChemCam is available at http://www.msl-chemcam.com. The rover's MastCam was built by and is operated by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/.
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP/LPGNantes/CNRS/IAS/MSSS

Image Addition Date:
2014-07-15

[rstevenson]

Let me be the first to point out the "alligator" on the top-right edge of the larger meteorite. Best I show this on a science site before the Twit-verse picks it up.

NOT a preserved Martian alligator carcass!

Rob

[Beyond]

Ok Rob, anytime you're ready, point away.

[geckzilla]

Beyond, do you even try to understand things or do you just write a reply after a quick glance to inform us of your constant not understanding things? Seriously, at least take a couple of minutes to think first. You produce far too much noise and too little signal.

[neufer]

This rock encountered by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is an iron meteorite called "Lebanon,"

Curiosity finds big iron meteorite on Mars
Posted on July 15, 2014 by astrobob

<<With its gunmetal sheen and numerous ‘thumbprints’ it looks identical to many fresh iron meteorites found on Earth. Those Swiss cheese-like holes called regmaglypts form in a couple different ways. Softer, less heat resistant minerals like iron sulfide (troilite) riddle some iron meteorites. During the plunge through a planet’s atmosphere, the surface of a meteoroid heats up, melts and gets sculpted by powerful, super-heated air. Softer materials melt away or ‘ablate’, giving the meteorite its classic thumbprint texture.>>

See more at: http://astrobob.areavoices.com/?blog=78068&#91

[b][color=#0000FF]The Stone of the Pregnant Woman[/color][/b]

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<<Baalbeck/Baalbek is a town in the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon; it was one of the largest sanctuaries in the empire and contains some of the best preserved Roman ruins in Lebanon. The history of settlement in the area of Baalbeck dates back about 9,000 years. After Alexander the Great conquered the Near East in 334 BC, the existing settlement was named Heliopolis (Ἡλιούπολις) from helios, Greek for sun, and polis, Greek for city. The city retained its religious function during Greco-Roman times, when the sanctuary of the Heliopolitan Jupiter-Baal was a pilgrimage site.

The Stone of the Pregnant Woman (Arabic: Hadjar el Hibla‎) or Stone of the South is a Roman monolith in Baalbek/ Heliopolis. Together with another ancient stone block nearby, it is among the largest monoliths ever quarried. The two building blocks were intended for the close-by Roman temple complex − possibly as an addition to the so-called trilith − which was characterized by a monolithic gigantism unparalled in antiquity.>>