Planet Mars Meteorite Identified with Significant Water From Martian Crust
Scientists found what is thought to be the first meteorite to originate from Mars in the Saharan desert.
Details of the research on the rock known as NWA 7034 were published on Thursday by the journal Science.
"I had never seen anything like it," said study leader Carl Agee, director of the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
Agee received NWA 7034 in 2011 as a donation from to the University of New Mexico. It was brought to the U.S. by an American who bought it from a Moroccan meteorite dealer.
The space rock weighs 319.8-gram and is about the size of a baseball. Its dark nature earned it the nickname "Black Beauty," according to The Los Angeles Times.
The meteorite gives researchers an invaluable look into the crust of the Mars. Scientists ran sophisticated tests and gained a wealth of information about the rock's history and the environment in which it formed on its home planet.
This is not the first meteorite discovered from the Red Planet.
Around 110 other Martian meteorites have been found on Earth but this specimen is around 2.1-billion-year-old and has around 10 times more water than any other space rock from Mars.
Researchers used carbon dating methods to figure out its age and the recent study was published after a year's worth of analysis, according to The Associated Press.
Scientists believe the meteorite was a piece of Mars that shot from the planet after a major volcanic eruption just over 2 billion years ago. The lava cooled and hardened on the surface of the planet. The cooling processes was aided by water, which left an imprint in the meteorite that has not been found in such large quantities on other space rocks from Mars.
