Spanish explorers find three-million-year-old Martian meteorite in Tunisian desert
Sunday, June 2, 2013 @ 7:33 PM
A METEORITE found in the Tunisian Sahara desert by two Spaniards has turned out to be a lump of Martian rock.
It was discovered in 2010 but the finding has been kept secret until now as researchers at Catalunya Polytechnic studied it.
According to head of the Faculty of Nano-engineering, Jordi Llorca, the composition of the meteorite – which weighs just over half a kilo – is identical to that of two other rocks found in Morocco and in Los Ángeles (USA) which form part of meteor shower which permanently orbits Mars.
The meteor shower originated through a collision by an asteroid against Mars some three million years ago, and it frequently travels close to the Earth.
Its origin is the deepest yet in the Martian crust, and is a KG-002, of the Shergottita type, which is the 17th most significant of all interplanetary rocks found.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com