MARS MYSTERY: Rover Finds Rock That Shouldn't Be There

NASA's Perseverance rover just stumbled across something that has scientists scratching their heads – a rock on Mars that has absolutely no business being where it is.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
NASA's Perseverance rover just stumbled across something that has scientists
scratching their heads. A rock on Mars that has absolutely
no business being where it is. I'm Darren Marler, and
this is weird dark news. The boulder sits near the
edge of Jazaro Crater, this massive twenty eight mile wide
basin the researchers believe might have been filled with water

(00:34):
billions of years ago. That makes it one of the
prime spots to hunt for evidence that Mars once hosted life.
Perseverance has been rolling around this ancient crater since February
twenty twenty one, cataloging the geology and picking apart the
planet's history one rock at a time. This particular find
measures about thirty one inches across, and right away it

(00:56):
caught at tension because of its weirdly sculpted appearance. Ver's
super cam instrument went to work on it, blasting a
tiny section of the surface with a high powered laser
to analyze what the thing is actually made of. They
named it Phippsoksla, and the results came back showing something
nobody expected to see in Jesero Crater. The rock contains
exceptionally high levels of iron and nickel. Doctor Candace Bedford,

(01:20):
a geologist from Purdue University who works with the Perseverance team,
explained in a NASA blog post that this particular elemental
combination typically shows up in iron nickel meteorites that form
in the cores of large asteroids. In other words, this
rock didn't form on Mars at all. It came from
somewhere else, entirely in the Solar System. Perseverance had climbed

(01:42):
up into an area called Vernadin, perched high on the
crater's rim, when it spotted Fifpsoklas sitting there. Finding a
meteorite on Mars is an exactly shocking news. Professor Gareth
Collins from Imperial College London points out that Mars gets
pelted by meteors constantly. The entire Martian surface has been
shaped by impacts over its history, and meteors are expected

(02:02):
to hit Mars on a daily basis. Though nobody knows
the precise number, there should be plenty of them scattered around.
Most of the meteorites that fall on Mars are rocky.
Only about one in twenty are rich in iron and nickel.
Like Pipsokla appears to be these metallic meteorites typically get
forged in the hearts of massive asteroids during the early

(02:23):
days of the Solar System. When these asteroids were heated,
the heavy minerals like iron and nickel sank toward the center,
while lighter materials stayed near the surface. When these asteroids
get smashed apart by collisions, chunks of that metallic core
can end up flying through space until they eventually crash
into a planet. Doctor Gareth Dorian from the University of
Birmingham suggests that Pipsocla likely originated in the asteroid belt

(02:46):
between Mars and Jupiter. These iron nickel meteorites can withstand
chemical weathering better than their rocky counterparts, which means they
have a better shot at surviving the blazing journey through
planet's atmosphere without completely burning up or breaking up. Part
The thing is, even though these metallic meteorites are rarer
than the rocky variety, Mars gets hit by so many

(03:07):
space rocks that every rover we have sent there has
eventually found some. NASA's Curiosity rover discovered numerous iron nickel
meteorites while exploring Gale Crater, including one massive specimen they
dubbed Lebanon that would measure thirty nine inches across. The
Spirit rover found similar metallic meteorites during its mission iiO.
That's what makes Phippsokla particularly interesting. Doctor Bedford noted that

(03:31):
it's been somewhat unexplained that Perseverance had not encountered any
iron nickel meteorites and Jaesaro Crater until now. Gale Crater
and Jaesaro Crater are roughly the same age, and Jazero
is covered with smaller impact craters that prove meteorites have
been falling there throughout Mars's history. They should have spotted
metallic space rocks before this. Because Phippsokla is such an

(03:54):
unusual find for this location, NASA's science team needs more
time to analyze the data and confirm whether it truly
is a meteorite. If they can verify that it did
fall from space, then Perseverance will finally join the ranks
of Mars rovers that have investigated these rare Martian visitors.
This isn't the first time Perseverance has encountered something strange.

(04:14):
During its exploration of just Zero Crater back in August,
the rover photographed what looked like a bizarre helmet sitting
on the Martian surface. When scientists examined it more closely,
they discovered it was covered with small round formations called
sphere rules. On Earth, these sphear rules form in one
of two ways, either through the rapid cooling of molten
rock droplets during volcanic eruptions, or through the condensation of

(04:37):
rock that's been vaporized by a meteorite impact. Finding them
on Mars suggests this particular rock might have formed long ago,
when the planet's surface was still dotted with active volcanoes,
back when Mars was a very different world than the cold,
barren desert it is today. If you'd like to read
this story for yourself or share the article with a friend,
you can read it on the Weird Darkness website. I've

(04:58):
placed a link to it in the episode description, and
you can find more stories of the paranormal, true crime, strange,
and more, including numerous stories that never make it to
the podcast in my Weird darknewsblog at Weird Darkness dot com.
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