![\"Phippsaksla,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/phippsaksla-mars.png\")
<\/p>\nAfter nearly five years of exploring Mars, NASA’s Perseverance has stumbled a rock which has baffled scientists, who claim it “doesn’t belong there”.<\/p>\n
The rover discovered a 31-inch rock experts believe is not native to the Red Planet.<\/p>\n
Named Phippsaksla, this mysterious boulder was found in the Vernodden area of Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide formation researchers think could have once harboured life.<\/p>\n
What makes this discovery particularly intriguing is the rock appears to be a metallic space visitor from elsewhere in the solar system.<\/p>\n
It is the first time Perseverance has encountered such a metal-rich rock during its mission, which began in February 2021.<\/p>\n
Scientists first noticed Phippsaksla because of its unusual appearance.<\/p>\n
The rock stood taller than its surroundings and had a distinctly sculpted look that set it apart from the flat, fragmented stones nearby.<\/p>\n
When Perseverance aimed its SuperCam instrument at the boulder, the results were fascinating.<\/p>\n
NASA’s Perseverance rover has stumbled upon Phippsaksla<\/p>\n
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NASA<\/p>\n
The rover’s laser heated a small portion of the rock’s surface, revealing an exceptionally high concentration of iron and nickel.<\/p>\n
“This element combination is usually associated with iron-nickel meteorites formed in the core of large asteroids, suggesting that this rock formed elsewhere in the solar system,” Dr Candice Bedford, a geologist from Purdue University who operates Perseverance, explained.<\/p>\n
These metallic meteorites are quite rare compared to their rocky cousins.<\/p>\n
They typically form in the cores of massive asteroids, created when heavy minerals sank into the centres of heated rocks during the early days of our solar system.<\/p>\n
![\"Mars\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/mars.jpg\")
NASA’s first landing on Mars was Viking 1 in 1976<\/p>\n
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GETTY<\/p>\n
But speaking to the Daily Mail, Professor Gareth Collins, from Imperial College London, said Mars gets hit by meteors “all the time”.<\/p>\n
He said: “Meteors are expected on Mars on a daily basis, we don’t know the number precisely, but there should be lots each day.”<\/p>\n
However, only one in 20 of these space rocks are rich in iron and nickel like Phippsaksla.<\/p>\n
Dr Gareth Dorrian, from the University of Birmingham, added: “It is quite likely this one on Mars came from the asteroid belt.<\/p>\n
“These particular meteorites are quite resistant to chemical weathering and are more likely to survive the fiery fall through a planetary atmosphere.”<\/p>\n
It is somewhat surprising that Perseverance had notfound one of these metallic visitors before now.<\/p>\n
Other Mars rovers have discovered similar iron-nickel meteorites, including Curiosity’s find of a 39-inch specimen called “Lebanon” in Gale crater.<\/p>\n
NASA scientists say they will need more time to analyse Phippsaksla to confirm it is definitely a meteorite from space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After nearly five years of exploring Mars, NASA’s Perseverance has stumbled a rock which has baffled scientists, who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,44,128,13296,285],"class_list":{"0":"post-295841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-sgg","13":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}