A huge iron-nickel meteorite discovered on the surface of Mars by one of NASA's robotic geology stations is giving scientists unexpected insights into the planet's past.
Among the questions scientists are scrambling to answer is how the watermelon-sized metallic rock managed to make it to surface of Mars intact.
Computer models show that the planet's current atmosphere could cushion the descent of a meteorite only about one-tenth the size of the meteorite the rover Opportunity spotted late last month.
Anything larger would have been mostly or totally obliterated on impact, leaving only a crater.
"The fact that this meteorite is still intact tells you that the atmosphere must have been denser to slow it down for the fall," planetary geologist Matt Golombek, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told Discovery News.
Opportunity has been exploring an equatorial region of the planet known as Meridian Planum since January 2004 looking of signs of past water. It discovered a much smaller metallic meteorite in December 2004 as it was probing part of its discarded heat shield.
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