PIA12254: Opportunity Finds Another Meteorite
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has found a rock that apparently is another meteorite, less than three weeks after driving away from a larger meteorite that the rover examined for six weeks.
Target Name: Mars
Is a satellite of: Sol (our sun)
Mission: Mars Exploration Rover (MER)
Spacecraft: Opportunity
Instrument: Navigation Camera
Product Size: 1024 samples x 1024 lines
Produced By: JPL
Full-Res TIFF: PIA12254.tif (1.05 MB)
Full-Res JPEG: PIA12254.jpg (96.74 kB)

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NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has found a rock that apparently is another meteorite, less than three weeks after driving away from a larger meteorite that the rover examined for six weeks.

Opportunity used its navigation camera during the mission's 2,022nd Martian day, or sol, (Oct. 1, 2009) to take this image of the apparent meteorite dubbed "Shelter Island." The pitted rock is about 47 centimeter (18.5 inches) long. Opportunity had driven 28.5 meters (94 feet) that sol to approach the rock after it had been detected in images taken after a drive two sols earlier.

Opportunity has driven about 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) since it finished studying the meteorite called "Block Island" on Sept. 11, 2009.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Image Addition Date:
2009-10-03