PASADENA, Calif., April 15 (UPI) -- NASA's Opportunity rover has found a volcanic rock on Mars that scientists said has similarities to meteorites that have fallen to Earth.
"We think we have a rock similar to something found on Earth," Benton Clark, science-team member for the Opportunity and Spirit rovers on Mars, told reporters on Thursday.
The resemblance, seen in data from Opportunity's instruments, "gives us a way of understanding 'Bounce Rock' better," he said. Bounce Rock is the name given to the football-sized object because Opportunity struck it while bouncing to a stop inside protective airbags when it landed on Jan. 24.
The parallel compositions also help resolve a paradox about the meteorites, Clark said. Bubbles of gas trapped in certain meteorites match the gaseous proportions of the Martian atmosphere so closely that scientists have been confident for years the space rocks came from Mars. The problem was that orbiters and surface missions to Mars had never found anything like them -- until now.
"There is a striking similarity," said Christian Schroeder, a rover science-team collaborator from the University of Mainz, Germany.
