We’d like you to enter the Space & Beyond Box More Than Just a Rock photo contest by sharing a favorite story of one of the meteorites in your collection. What’s your favorite, and why? How did you collect it? Have you found a meteorite in the field? Bought them from dealers, or at shows? Share a picture of your most treasured meteorite and the story behind it for your chance to win a Meteorite Exploration Kit – a $89.99 value.
The contest is open now through September 24, 2020.
There’s something that’s totally magical about holding a space rock in your hands. Rocks litter our planet’s surface, but only a select few have fallen from the deep solar system, and are literally pieces of asteroids, the Moon, or Mars. I have a small meteorite collection that I love. I’ve never gone crazy collecting them, but they are really amazing artifacts to have and hold.
I’m sharing one of my favorites here. It’s a rather ordinary looking stone, only about a centimeter across, but it is pure magic. NWA 10645 may look plain, but analyses of this stone demonstrate that it fell from the planet Mars. I’m holding a martian rock in my hand!
NWA 10645 fell in northwestern Africa (thus the NWA designation), probably in Morocco, and was acquired by an American meteorite dealer in 2016. It contains dark green pyroxene grains in cream-colored feldspar. Analyses of the composition of the rock shows that it originated on Mars, and likely an ancient impact on the Red Planet knocked it into space, and eventually it landed in Africa.
