UntitledCAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A rock in Mars' Meridiani Planum shares a mineral "fingerprint" not with other Mars rocks that probes have seen, but with a meteorite that smashed into Antarctica millennia ago.
NASA's Opportunity rover has been roaming a plain where a salty sea once flowed. Bounce Rock, named because the rover bounced by it during its airbag-softened landing, is exotic partly because there are hardly any rocks in the vicinity.
The rover did some grinding on the rock and found it was even more strange, scientists said Wednesday, and not at all like the outcrop Opportunity studied for weeks.
"Looking at the interior, we confirmed this is a very different rock than we have seen thus far at Meridiani," said Jason Soderblom of Cornell University, who is working with the science team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
Mineral analysis showed that Bounce Rock closely resembled the meteorite EETA79001, which fell in Antarctica probably 10,000 or more years ago, said rover scientist Benton Clark of Lockheed Martin.
In the past, this meteorite convinced some scientists that it held organic compounds, indicative of life on Mars. Other scientists say the evidence has earthly origins. The space rock also held pockets of gases that resembled the Martian atmosphere.
On Mars, it's possible that Bounce Rock blew out of a crater-causing impact about 30 miles away from its current location. The 79001 meteorite might have come from a similar area on Mars, scientists say.
The $820 million twin rovers just successfully completed a software update that will help them drive, conserve power and manage glitches better.
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