Curiosity – Live from Mars

  The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) team celebrate the safe arrival of Curiosity on Mars. (image: NASA/ Bill Ingalls) Last Friday I went to a really fascinating talk by Dr Carlton Allen, the Astromaterials Curator at the NASA Johnson Space Centre, Houston, Texas. Dr Allen is in charge of all the extraterrestrial samples collected by…

Tissint -Soil Science Martian Style

Dr Sasha Verchovsky and “Finesse”. Dr Verchovsky works in the Open University’s Department of Physical Sciences and made extensive measurements of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in Tissint using a high-sensitivity and high-precision mass spectrometer called “Finesse”. Dr Verchovsky’s analyses were able to show that Tissint contains traces of Martian atmosphere, as well as soil-like material…

Tissint – So what’s all the fuss about?

Oued Tissint, Morocco close to where the Tissint Martian meteorite was recovered in October 2011 (image: Wikipedia). Following my last post on the SNC meteorites, there was a bit of frenzy in the media about the latest Martian arrival, known as Tissint. Now, I am of course not claiming that this unprecedented media interest was…

It came from Mars – or did it?

Mars – Source of the SNCs?(image: NASA) Recently, we have been running a fair few SNCSs on our oxygen isotope line here at the Open University. SNCs? You ask. What are they? Well, they are meteorites that come from Mars. From Mars! How do you know that then? Now, that is a very good question!…