News Archive

Thursday, January 24, 2002 Mars Rocks Mars rock. Credit: Bruno Feotay & Carine Bidaut (CNN) - Exploring the coldest and hottest places on Earth, space rock hunters have found five new meteorites from Mars, bringing the number of known stones from the red planet to 24. Planet scientists express keen interest in rare martian meteorites, some of which have offered tantalizing clues about whether the planet once possessed oceans or life. The recent cache actually includes six specimens, but two are presumed to be chunks from the same meteorite. One of the pair weighs in at 30 pounds (13.7 kg), the second-largest Mars meteorite fragment ever recovered, NASA scientists said this week. Separate expeditions discovered the rocks in Antarctica and the deserts of Oman and the Sahara, mostly between 2000 and 2001. With little or no dirt, grass or tree cover, deserts and the Antarctic are preferred hunting grounds for space rock collectors. @ 20:57 EST