Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'What a coincidence!' that was published in Newsband

What a coincidence!

A 2-billion-year-old dark lump of rock that landed in Sahara desert is actually a new type of Martian meteorite, containing 10 times more water than usual. This new class of meteorite was found in 2011 in the Sahara Desert. It was nicknamed “Black Beauty” and it weighs approximately 320 grams. After more than a year of intensive study, a team of US scientists determined the meteorite formed 2.1 billion years ago during the beginning of the most recent geologic period on Mars, known as the Amazonian.

Hence our scientists now have insight into a piece of Mars’ history at a critical time in its evolution. The contents of this meteorite may challenge many long held notions about Martian geology. These findings also present an important reference frame for the Curiosity rover as it searches for reduced organics in the minerals exposed in the bedrock of Gale Crater.

This Martian meteorite has everything in its composition that you’d want in order to further the understanding of the Red Planet. This unique meteorite tells as to what volcanism was like on Mars 2 billion years ago. It also gives a glimpse of ancient surface and environmental conditions on Mars that no other meteorite has ever offered.

The large amount of water contained in it may have originated from interaction of the rocks with water present in Mars’ crust. The meteorite also has a different mixture of oxygen isotopes than has been found in other Martian meteorites, which could have resulted from interaction with the Martian atmosphere.

Earlier missions to Mars had detected Methane in the thin Martian atmosphere, but the discovery is yet to be corroborated. Methane is known to be released by some microbes as part of their digestive process.

It is a coincidence that just when the Indian satellite is expected to exit the Earth’s orbit on November 26 and embark on the journey to Mars which is expected to last for around 300 days, our scientists find a Martian meteorite landed on earth.

A key challenge before the scientists is navigating the spacecraft from the Earth to Mars in deep space using the Deep Space Network at Baylalu on the outskirts of Bangalore.

Another challenge would be to re-activate the temporary inactive sub-systems of the spacecraft once it reaches Mars after a 10-month journey through deep space.

It is left to be seen at to how our scientists will meet this challenge.