Mars Meteorite Found in the Sahara Desert, the ‘Black Beauty’ Reveals Several Secrets

NASA just discovered a Martian! Yes! But it’s no alien life, rather a meteorite. The ancient meteorite has been nicknamed ‘Black Beauty’ and scientists believe, it holds inside a lot of secrets about Mars.

A Martian landed on the Sahara desert, and NASA calls it the ‘Black Beauty’. It’s a meteorite from Mars and it’s 4.4 billion years old. It’s the oldest ever Martian meteorite that scientists have got their hold on. It weighs approximately 11 ounces and officially known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034.

Being a form of breccia the meteorite contains a variety of different crustal rocks that were mixed together and then sintered by heating. According to the research published in the 23rd May journal of ‘Science Advances’, the meteorite is a result of a giant impact.

“If the Martian crustal dichotomy formed as a result of a giant impact, and available data and modeling suggest this is likely, the history of NWA 7034 requires that it formed very early in the planet's history, before 4.4 billion years ago,” authored by LLNL cosmochemist Bill Cassata.

The meteorite originally discovered in the year 2011, claims to open doors to a number of unknown information about Mars’ topography and the planet’s history. It has also come under the light that the material combination of the meteorite is nearly 200 million years old.

The Sahara desert has been the source of discovery of such Martian meteorites for the NASA researchers. But this meteorite is surely special and different. Studies in 2013 suggested that it had more water than any other meteorites from the red planet. And this leads the scientists to think that it surely had a direct connection with the ancient water in the crust of Mars.