“Add it to the list of things that can be fun if you had a butt load of money”: someone Two -pointed More than $ 5.3 million in Sothabi auction For a piece of Mars. The red planet meteorite was discovered in 2023 in a remote region of the Sahara Desert in Niger.
Martian meteorites of any size are incredibly rare. To reach here, an asteroid first hits the red planet to remove the material out of its surface. (Sothebi says that only 19 martian creters are large to spit this one.) That chunk will then have to travel 140 million miles through space to reach the Earth. Only 400 out of 77,000+ officially recognized meteorites from Mars.
Meteorite is known as NWA 16788. Its red-brown, skard exterior looks like the surface of the red planet in almost short.
It is also an extraordinary large Martian meteorite. It is about 70 percent larger than the second largest piece of Mars found on Earth. It measures 14.75 x 11 x 6 inches and weighs more than 54 pounds. This is quite large to represent about 6.5 percent of all known martian materials on our planet.
The victorious bid was for $ 4.3 million. After fees, it exceeds $ 5.3 million, making it the most valuable meteorite ever.
Before bidding, the auction house sent a small piece of space rock to a laboratory, which confirmed its specific martian chemical structure. More than 21 percent of the rock is made of masklenite, when the asteroid hit the martian surface, a glass was produced.
