'Message' from the fourth meteorite on Mars

NASA's Curiosity probe stumbled upon a rock that seemed to fall from outer space to Mars.

This rock is small, dark gray in color, so it stands out among the red features of Mars.

NASA named this mysterious rock Ames Knob , and analyzed it with the spectrometer obtained from the ChemCam laser device of the Curiosity ship, to determine the element properties.

"You can even see in the picture that there are three points that ChemCam's laser has fired at Ames Knob," NASA's Guy Webster spokesman sent an email to Space from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. .

ChemCam's results show that the Ames Knob is an iron-nickel meteorite . The Ames Knob, about 10cm wide, about 14 cm long, is the fourth meteorite Curiosity found on Mars.

The probe meteorite is captured.(Photo: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS).

In May 2014, the probe rolled over two large iron meteorites called Littleton and Lebanon , about 2 meters wide. And at the end of last year, Curiosity caught a small meteorite with a golf ball, called Stone Egg .

The Curiosity probe is about the size of a sports car that landed on Mars's Gale crater in August 2012. The observations of the ship quickly show that Gale used to have a system of rivers and lakes. ancient.

Curiosity arrives at Mount Sharp at 5.5km, located between the Gale crater, in September 2014 after a 14-month journey. Since then, the six-wheeled robot started shifting the working mode to climbing mountains, analyzing rock layers to find clues about ancient Mars environment.

Scientists hope this climb will help them better understand why Mars has changed dramatically from a hot, humid planet to a dry and cold day.

"The meteorites Curiosity and the previous probes found by Spirit and Opportunity could answer these questions," said ChemCam technician Roger Wiens at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

"We hope meteorites will be able to tell us some information about Mars's environment, such as how they fell into soil or water, or how thick the air was at the time they were fall, " Wiens wrote in the email.