The meteorite is made primarily of nickel and iron, and it has a name: Cacao. Curiosity has actually come throughout numerous meteorites since landing in Gale Crater in August 2012.
Cacao stands apart aesthetically from its environments. While the Martian surface is red from oxides, the meteorite is dark grey and metallic-looking. Its also smooth and rounded, apparent signs that it travelled through an environment.
MSL Curiosity is setting about its company checking out Mars. The high-tech rover is currently exploring the sulphate-bearing system on Mt. Sharp, the main peak in Mars Gale Crater. Serendipity put a metal meteorite in its course.
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The image is a composite of 6 individual images taken with the rovers Mastcam. Interest captured the images on Jan 27, 2023, the 3,724 th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The colours in the image have been corrected to match the lighting conditions as seen with human eyes on Earth.
A high-resolution TIFF is available at https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25737 Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
The pits and grooves are called regmaglypts. Theyre particularly intriguing on iron meteorites. When Cacao was taking a trip through the environment, they formed. Despite the fact that Mars atmosphere is much thinner than Earths, it still produces enough friction to heat the meteorites surface. The regmaglypts are likely created by vortices of hot gas that melted the rock as it took a trip through the environment.
MSL Curiosity discovered the iron-nickel meteorite “Cacao” on January 27th, 2023. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
The meteorite may have been on Mars surface for a long time, however nobody knows for sure.
This isnt the first meteorite rovers have discovered on Mars. In 2016, MSL Curiosity discovered another metal meteorite about the size of a golf ball called “Egg Rock.” It took a look at that a person with its ChemCam instrument to identify its structure. The grid pattern of five small white dots shows where the instruments laser struck the rock.
The dark, smooth-surfaced item at the center of this Oct. 30, 2016, image from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASAs Curiosity Mars rover was analyzed with laser pulses and validated to be an iron-nickel meteorite. Its surface area is also marked with regmaglypts. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Iron-nickel meteorites are the rarest kind of meteorites, making up about 6% of seen falls. Because of their telltale visual look, theyre over-represented in collections. Thats because theyre more most likely to survive passage through an atmosphere and are more resistant to weathering, even on Mars.
The majority of iron-nickel meteorites originate from the cores of shattered planetesimals that formed in the early Solar System. When they were molten, those objects were big enough to separate. They formed a core of dense iron and nickel, similar to Earth did. But life as a planetesimal was dangerous, and a lot of them were shattered into asteroids. Thats Cacaos most likely history.
Interest found this iron meteorite called “Lebanon” back in 2014. Its about 2 lawns or 2 meters large (left to right, from this angle). The smaller piece in the foreground is called “Lebanon B.” This image combines a series of high-resolution circular images across the middle taken by the Remote Micro-Imager (RMI). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/ CNES/IRAP/LPGNantes/ CNRS/IAS/MSSS.
Thats what makes meteorites, and specifically metal ones, so clinically intriguing. They can go back billions of years to the start of the Solar System.
On Earth, meteorites like Cacao were humankinds first source of iron. Long before smelting, individuals gathered these meteorites when they might and made knives and other executes out of them. King Tut was buried with a dagger made from meteoric iron, and the Inuit individuals in the Arctic and in Greenland likewise utilized meteoric iron. They repeatedly visited one particularly big iron meteorite called the Cape York meteorite. They hammered off portions of iron to form into harpoon tips and began their own iron age without knowing anything about smelting. They even traded iron with other groups of people.
However only our robot explorers will ever set eyes on Cacao.
Cacao is just a fascinating quirk to MSL Curiosity. By looking into the area, Curiosity is shedding light on Mars ancient history, and how it dried up to end up being the dessicated wasteland it is now.
Finding Cacao is just a reward.
Zooming into Cacaos fascinating pits and ridges. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.
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The meteorite is made primarily of nickel and iron, and it has a name: Cacao. The dark, smooth-surfaced things at the center of this Oct. 30, 2016, image from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASAs Curiosity Mars rover was analyzed with laser pulses and verified to be an iron-nickel meteorite. Iron-nickel meteorites are the rarest type of meteorites, making up about 6% of experienced falls. On Earth, meteorites like Cacao were humanitys first source of iron. They consistently checked out one particularly large iron meteorite called the Cape York meteorite.