Rover Finds Iron on Mars
Rover unable to press shirts until it discovers water. Sorry, awful pun. Via Geek News Central, we’ve got another first in space history:
The pitted, basketball-size object is mostly made of iron and nickel according to readings from spectrometers on the rover. Only a small fraction of the meteorites fallen on Earth are similarly metal-rich. Others are rockier. As an example, the meteorite that blasted the famous Meteor Crater in Arizona is similar in composition.
‘Others are rockier’? What a peculiar usage. I continue to be amazed by the quality of the photos being sent by from another freakin’ planet.
January 20th, 2005 at 5:15 pm
Did any of you catch the special on Titan (what a great name that is) on Discovery Channel and the short session on Saturn’s other moons?
It seems that Iapetus has a 1300km long ridge line around it’s waist. That is just mind-blowing.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press-release-details.cfm?newsID=526
January 20th, 2005 at 9:13 pm
Seems odd to me that they made a big deal of the rover finding iron on Mars. I mean, it’s Mars. The red planet, so named because of the amount of iron in the soil :P
January 21st, 2005 at 8:50 am
uhh, it’s a meteorite.