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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."
This is a big deal. You don't find raw metal much on Mars; most of it is tied up with oxygen. Raw metal has many implications: if it is common, it can be a great source of base building. If the metals are rare on Earth as well, and they're common on Mars, they could provide a potential export source. If it is a meteor, and they're common, it could affect our models of how often Mars gets struck by meteors. Since the rock isn't buried, it could provide clues as to how long it's been on Mars, how fast Meridiani Planum is eroding, and give us dataon how metals wear over time on Mars.
Any time you find something you've never found before, it's a big deal. Honestly, to people who've been following the mission, it looked like Opportunity was pretty much wrapping things up. It just left a geological treasure trove and there isn't much more "on the map", so to speak. It's neat to see it continue making nice finds.
We're practicing our labials.
For those of you who don't know what TES (Thermal Emission Spectrometer) is, here is some more information. The webpage is quite interesting.
Looking at the heat shield doesn't seem like a very revealing bit of science -- more of a "gee look how far we've come" sort of cool thing.
You're right, looking at the heat shield isn't about science, but it is about engineering. The heat shield can obviously never be adequately tested, and until you take a look at it you never know exactly how well it performed. Were there areas where it could have failed? Was is over-engineered? Those are usefull questions that if we had answers to we could design better/more efficient heat shielding in the future.
The heat shield also digs into the surface far more than the rovers ever could, so you might see whats below the surface. Though looking at the heat shield sounds like a total geek thing to do, it can reveal a lot of non obvious information.
At this point you're probbably right about finding something to do. In the area where the rovers have landed we've seen the everyday stuff, and now it's all about being lucky enough to see the more rare things.
AccountKiller
"Iron meteorites", also called "irons", are usually just one big blob of iron-nickel (Fe-Ni) metal, as if it came from a industrial refinery without shaping. The alloy ranges from 5% to 62% nickel from meteorite to meteorite, with an average of 10% nickel. Cobalt averages about 0.5%, and other metals such as the platinum group metals, gallium, and germanium are dissolved in the Fe-Ni metal. (Fe is the chemical symbol for iron.) While most "irons" are pure or nearly pure metal, the technical definition of an "iron" includes metal meteorites with up to 30% mineral inclusions such as sulfides, metal oxides and silicates. The irons represent the cores of former planetoids.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Meteors don't work like that, basically. What happens is that anything moving above a certain speed gets vapourised; shooting stars are. If it's large enough that it doesn't vapourise completely, what's left hits the ground at kilometres per second and makes a hell of a bang.
However, anything moving slowly gets slowed to a stop by the atmosphere, at which point it just falls.
The net effect is that meteors hit the ground either at kilometres per second or about two or three hundred miles per hour, and nothing in between.