Meteorite displayed at UK museum will be going back to Mars
A METEORITE that originated from Mars and has been held in the Natural History Museum for 20 years is to be returned to the Red Planet as part of Nasa’s rover mission.
The small chunk of rock will be used to help Nasa’s Perseverance robot carry out its experiments by tuning its instruments – known as calibration.
Calibration involves testing a previously analysed object, so when new ones are discovered, the tests can be compared to ensure the instrument is working correctly.
The meteorite will act as a calibration marker for Perseverance when it lands on Mars and add confidence to any findings, including were it to discover any hint of previous life.
“It is always good for your calibration material to be as similar as possible to the unknown that you are measuring,” said Prof Caroline Smith, head of collections for Earth sciences at the museum.
“We discussed which different types of rock could be used for the Sherloc Calibration Target on the rover, and actually we decided that the best type of material would be basalt, which is ubiquitous on Mars. Then we had to think about what type of basalt, because Martian basalts are a bit different in composition to Earth basalts ... this [one] will be similar to the rocks we’re actually expecting to analyse.”
The meteorite chosen, known as Sayh al Uhaymir 008, or SAU 008, was discovered in the deserts of Oman in 1999 and became part of the museum’s collection in 2000.
Basalt is an igneous rock formed from the cooling of magnesium-rich and iron-rich lava. The rock, along with nine other types of material, will be placed on the front of the rover where it will be scanned by the Sherloc instrument during its analysis of other particles.
“It formed about 450million years ago, got blasted off Mars by an asteroid or comet roughly 600,000 to 700,000 years ago, and then landed on Earth; we don’t know precisely when but perhaps 1,000 years ago. And now it’s going back to Mars,” Prof Smith said.