Martian meteorite may hold clues to water on the Red Planet

Scientists are examining fragments of a Martian meteorite to try to establish when water was freely flowing on the red planet.

Mars (The Red Planet)
Credit: NASA and the Hubble
Heritage Team

Under a three-year project, funded with £530,000 from STFC, Dr Martin Lee and colleagues at the University of Glasgow are painstakingly scanning a tiny chunk of a meteorite called Nakhla, using powerful electron microscopes. The Nakhla meteorite, which fell to Earth in 1911, reputedly hit a dog in Egypt as it landed.

The team is looking for minerals within the Nakhla that might have been carried there by water seeping through tiny pores in the rock which then crystallised.

Dr Lee, a senior lecturer in Geographical and Earth Sciences, said: “Meteorites like this offer the best way of analysing the Martian environment and geological history as there’s more of Mars on Earth than we could ever bring back from the planet itself. It’s possible that we might even find bits of water trapped within rocks, and maybe some traces of organic material within that.”

View the full press release (link opens in a new window).

STFC is custodian of a collection of moon rocks, owned by NASA, and meteorites, owned by the Natural History Museum.  The collection, which includes a piece of the Nakhla meteorite, is available on loan to schools as part of their educational programme. View further details on the scheme (link opens in a new window).

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