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PIA07269: Iron Meteorite on Mars
On Jan. 6, 2005, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity found an iron meteorite on Mars, the first meteorite of any type ever identified on another planet. The pitted, basketball-size object is mostly made of iron and nickel.
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mars Exploration Rover (MER) 
 Spacecraft:  Opportunity
 Instrument:  Panoramic Camera 
 Product Size:  514 x 513 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  Cornell University 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA07269.tif (659.2 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA07269.jpg (42.64 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has found an iron meteorite on Mars, the first meteorite of any type ever identified on another planet. The pitted, basketball-size object is mostly made of iron and nickel. Readings from spectrometers on the rover determined that composition. Opportunity used its panoramic camera to take the images used in this approximately true-color composite on the rover's 339th martian day, or sol (Jan. 6, 2005). This composite combines images taken through the panoramic camera's 600-nanometer (red), 530-nanometer (green), and 480-nanometer (blue) filters.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Cornell

Image Addition Date:
2005-01-19