NASA Curiosity Rover Discovers Metal Meteorite on Mount Sharp on Mars

NASA Curiosity is exploring Mt. Sharp, the central peak in the Red planet's Gale Crater. The Mars rover discovered something out of the ordinary in its recent exploration.

Mars Curiosity Rover Found a Metal Meteorite

Curiosity was doing its business as usual and was exploring the sulfate-bearing unit on Mt. Sharp when it came across a metal meteorite in its path, according to Science Alert.

The rare meteorite was made of nickel and iron. It was named Cacao, where chocolates come from. It isn't very large and only measures 30 centimeters (1 foot) across.

Although the Mars rover has encountered several meteorites in its years of exploration on the Red Planet, Cacao stands out because of its dark grey and metallic color. It is visible because the planet's surface is red due to oxides.

Cacao is also smooth and round in shape. Those were obvious signs that it passed through an atmosphere.

Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam)captured 19 panorama images with its 100-millimeter focal length lens on Jan. 28. The photos were stitched together and were sent to Earth, NASA said. The colors in the image have been corrected to match the lighting conditions as with human eyes on Earth. The outlet noted that it has grooves and pits called regmaglypts, formed when the meteorite traveled through the atmosphere.

Mars has a thinner atmosphere than Earth but still creates enough friction to heat the meteorite's surface. Cacao may have been on Mars for a long time. However, nobody knows for sure.

Other Metal Meteorites That Mars Curiosity Rover Encountered in the Past

In 2017, the NASA Curiosity rover stumbled across another meteorite. It was the third one nearly five years since it touched down on the Red Planet.

The meteorite was turkey-shaped with a gray, metallic luster. It has a light-dimpled texture and regmaglypts. The indentation resembled thumbprints in Play-Doh, according to Universe Today.

The regmaglypts are commonly observed in meteorites caused by softer materials stripped from the rock's surface caused by intense heat and pressure when it plunges into Mars' atmosphere.

Only one photograph of the presumed meteorite appears on the Mars raw image website. The photo was captured on Jan. 12 at 11:21 UT by Curiosity's color mast camera. Three shiny spots are visible in a row in the photo, a short distance above and to the right of the bright reflection a third of the way up from the base of the rock.

It appears to have been zapped by Curiosity's ChemCam laser. The rover fires a laser that vaporizes a portion of the meteorite's surface while a spectrometer analyzes the resulting plasma cloud to determine its chemical composition. The spots' mirror-like sheen is evidence that the gray mass is an iron-nickel meteorite.

In 2014, NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover also came across an iron meteorite called Lebanon. The meteorite was 2 meters wide. It has a smaller piece in the foreground, which they called Lebanon B.

Check out more news and information on Space in Science Times.