NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity recently discovered a roughly watermelon-sized meteorite, the largest ever found on the Red Planet. Even though Opportunity drove by it 2 weeks ago in a Mars region called Meridiani Planum, the rover team decided to have it retrace its steps to examine the unusual rock, dubbed “Block Island.”
It might be a pretty big deal. Besides the inherent coolness of meteorites themselves, Block Island might have a lot to say about the martian atmosphere and climate. It weighs too much to have landed in one piece in the current atmosphere, and the marks on its surface reveal some of the effects the climate has had on it over the years. All this gives some pretty good clues about the past martian atmosphere.
What strikes me the most, though, is just how impressive the Opportunity rover (along with its twin rover, Spirit) has proven to be. When the rovers landed in January 2004, their missions were only supposed to last 3 months. More than 5.5 years later, they’re both going strong, with Opportunity planning to continue its years-long trek toward Endeavour Crater after it’s done examining Block Island.
It’s easy to criticize NASA for getting some things wrong, or our government for setting the wrong goals, but it’s hard to deny just how significant an achievement these rovers are. At least 36 million miles away (and that’s at its closest possible) from Earth, we’re controlling machines that look at and examine the surface of another planet. Let’s hope we see more like them in the future, and more out of Mars, too.
Are you similarly impressed by Opportunity’s and NASA’s exploits? Have any cool meteorite stories of your own? Or is this all bad news in some way I overlooked?