NASA’s Perseverance rover has identified an exotic rock on Mars that may be an iron-nickel meteorite, according to scientists on the mission team.
The oddly sculpted rock, nicknamed Phippsaksla, measures more than 2.5 feet across and drew researchers’ attention because it jutted above the surrounding flat, fractured terrain. Perseverance targeted the object for closer study while working outside Jezero crater, the river-carved basin the rover has explored since landing in 2021.
The rover, a car-size mobile laboratory, photographed Phippsaksla on Sept. 2 and Sept. 19. But the public is only now learning of the find. A prolonged federal government shutdown delayed routine communications from the U.S. space agency, and NASA did not post details of the detection — along with other mission updates — until Nov. 13.
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