Opportunity Spots Curious Object On Mars

EhobaX writes "Space.com is reporting that NASA's Opportunity Mars rover has come across an interesting object -- perhaps a meteorite sitting out in the open at Meridiani Planum. Initial data taken by the robot's Mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES) is suggestive that the odd-looking "rock" is made of metal."

Meteorite?

[HeighYew]

I would think that a meteorite would've been buried in the sand instead of sitting on top of it...

Meteorite with no crater?

[schon]

OK, so speculation is that it's a meteorite - OK, but this was found on a large plain.. what are the odds that a meteor could hit a planet and not leave a crater? Wouldn't the gravity of Mars cause it to increase velocity?

Anyone with more knowledge of meteor physics than me have an explanation?

Re:Meteorite with no crater?

[LWATCDR]

If it was small enough it could land withoout much of a crater. At least here on earth most small meteors manage to land with out a huge impact crater.

What was their first reaction?

[RobertB-DC]

So the NASA team has been poking around the planet for more than a(n Earth) year [slashdot.org], right? Most of the surprises happened months ago... now it's just a matter of finding something to do until the batteries quit holding their charge. Looking at the heat shield [nasa.gov] doesn't seem like a very revealing bit of science -- more of a "gee look how far we've come" sort of cool thing.

Then they get a picture of a big freaking rock with a bunch of wierd holes, sitting there in the middle of a windblown plain. Not covered in dust like everything else... even the wind patterns in the dust around it look new.

What do you think the first guy to get that picture said when he looked, and then looked again, and realized that this wasn't going to be just another day on Mars?

Re:A real mystery.

[Rei]

I should also add that raw metal is very easy to mine. In fact, one proposal for lunar construction involves simply shipping up magnets and a machine that churns up regolith, since a small but significant percentage of lunar regolith is pure iron in powder form. Pure iron powder allows for powder metallurgy - while it's not quite as strong as cast iron (not that you need such strength on the moon), you can make almost any shape with it, with a high degree of detail, safety, low energy input, simple tools, and good speed.

But what is this?

[mowler2]

But what is this [lyle.org], that is next to the rock?

Is it the heat shield?

Re:Meteorite with no crater?

[DrXym]

Maybe it hit water in some previous age and sunk to the bottom?

Re:Meteorite with no crater?

[Lars T.]

So where are the craters here? [saharamet.com] All those meteorites lying around in the desert without a visible crater.

Re:Robot Bunny?

[actiondan]

Things like rovers that stay in one place once they become refuse don't seem like much of a problem. Scraps of fabric blowing around in the martian wind seem a little more troublesome to me.

The thing that came across to me in that 'bunny ears' story was that the engineers were not at all suprised that might be bits of tape, fabric etc loose on the martian surface.

Each time one of these pieces of debris is observed, it will have to be identified to ensure it is not something more interesting. Wouldn't it be easier to spend some time making sure that the debris doesn't get loose in the first place?

Orbiters versus Rovers

[rk]

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that we get more data our of rovers than we do orbiters. Certainly a rover can give us very detailed data of a given area, but our knowledge of the regional and global characteristics of Mars come courtesy of our orbiter missions. The very landing sites picked were selected because of the data from these orbiters. Most of the rover data is relayed by the relay systems on the Mars Odyssey orbiter. I would say that rovers and orbiters complement each other nicely.

Keep in mind that we've been roving on our planet since before the beginning of history, but we still get a lot of useful information out of orbiters around our world (Landsat, GOES, etc.), too.

Looks photochopped

[nxtr]

I know its NASA and I know they wouldn't play tricks on us, but... it looks like it's a bad photoshop job. Anyone else with that impression?