Opportunity Scores Again; Scientists Very Pleased
If you go exploring the neighborhood, you never know what you'll
find. Especially if you're NASA's incredible, overachieving Mars
rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. This week Opportunity, cruising the
Meridiani Plain, poked around looking at,and photographing, one of
the heat shields that it jettisoned on descent to the planet. Then
it moved on to a basketball-sized rock that rover program
scientists had been calling "Heat Shield Rock" for its proximity to
the discarded shield. The conclusion: the rock was a meteorite,
fallen from space, and made mostly of an alloy of iron and
nickel.