NASAsPerseverance roversuccessfully touched down on Marsthis morning, and has already begun beaming back images.
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A fragment of the NWA7397 meteorite, found in the Sahara desert in 2012.
Back in 1996, one Martian meteorite,ALH84001, was controversially thought to contain fossilized bacteria.
This means Mars has mostly lost the protective magnetic field that deflects cosmic radiation.
But we are confident Mars once had an ocean, containing water as we know it.
The temperature was above freezing and conditions were suitable for life.
If its basalt, though, how do we know its from Mars?
One is from its gas content.
Some of these rocks are then ejected from the planet becoming meteorites themselves.
The thousands of craters scarring Marss surface mean it is ancient.
This was confirmed when one meteorite was dated to be4.4 billion years old.
Properties of some other Martian meteorites show Marsformed within 13 million yearsof the formation of the Solar System.
Some Martian meteorites capture samples of the red planets atmosphere in gas bubbles.
Mars may be cold but it is not dead.
Martian meteorites also hold clues about how people may one day be able to survive on the planet.
Martian meteorites show olivine, a magnesium-silicate mineral, is common.
Martian meteorites show that big insights can be gleaned from little rocks and reveal what Mars is made of.
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