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Curiosity Confirms Origins of Martian Meteorites

Posted by samzenpus on from the sky-is-falling dept.

littlesparkvt writes "Earth's most eminent emissary to Mars has just proven that those rare Martian visitors that sometimes drop in on Earth — a.k.a. Martian meteorites — really are from the Red Planet. A key new measurement of Mars' atmosphere by NASA's Curiosity rover provides the most definitive evidence yet of the origins of Mars meteorites while at the same time providing a way to rule out Martian origins of other meteorites."

2 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. The Key Word is "Confirms" by mbone · · Score: 5, Informative

    Curiosity is just confirming the results of the Viking entry science neutral atmospheric composition experiment (different from the mass spectrometer operated on the surface). It's very nice to have this nailed down, but I don't think it changes anything.

    1. Re:The Key Word is "Confirms" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Oh no it has not the exact same composition. But certain elemental and isotopic ratios are characteristic enough. Look at this abstract for example http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0012821X84901833