Science and Tech

Determined the origin on Mars of a meteorite that arrived in Africa

Determined the origin on Mars of a meteorite that arrived in Africa

July 12 () –

New research led by Curtin University in Australia has pinpointed the exact spot for the first time. where the oldest and most famous Martian meteorite came from.

The research offers fundamental geological clues to the earliest origins of Mars, its authors publish in the journal ‘Nature Communications’.

Between five and ten million years ago, an asteroid crashed into Mars. It created a huge crater and launched a piece of the old Martian crust into space in the form of a new meteorite, which ended up crashing in Africa.

Now it is known where on Mars that meteorite came from, thanks to supercomputer-driven technology that allows us to explore the geology of the planets without leaving home.

The remains of the meteorite NWA 7034, known as ‘Black Beauty’, were discovered in Western Sahara in 2011. The story of its creation is being told for the first time by a global team led by researchers at Curtin University, supported by the Pawsey supercomputer in Perth, Australia, and with colleagues from France, the Ivory Coast, and the United States.

‘Black Beauty’ is made up of Martian rocks that formed nearly 4.5 billion years ago, when the crusts of Earth and Mars were still young. Now that we know the origin of the ‘Black Beauty’, researchers can use it to compare the formation of Mars and Earth.


The technology that has enabled this discovery will be used to identify the origin of other Martian meteorites, but also to identify billions of impact craters on the surface of Mercury and the Moon. To date, more than 300 Martian meteorites have been found on Earth.

The researchers named the crater Karratha, after a city in Western Australia that is home to one of the oldest rocks on Earth. The team wants NASA to prioritize the Karratha crater area as a future landing site on Mars.

The origin of the rocks of Mars was discovered analyzing thousands of high-resolution planetary images from various missions to Mars.

The team, in which researchers from France, the Ivory Coast and the United States have participated, identified some 90 million impact craters by running a machine learning algorithm on one of the fastest supercomputers in the southern hemisphere, at the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Center. The algorithm was partially developed by Kosta Servis, a senior data scientist at the Center.

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