The exact location of the oldest and most famous Martian meteorite has never been found before.
The crater on Mars that ejected the so-called Black Beauty meteorite weighed 320 grams and was found in northern Africa in 2011.
One of the oldest rocks in the world is located in the Pilbara city of Karratha, which is more than 1,500 km north of Perth.
The exciting discovery offered never-before-known details about the Martian meteorite, known as "Black Beauty," which is widely studied across the globe. Black Beauty is the only brecciated Martian sample that has multiple rock types in it, which is different from all other Martian meteorites that only have one rock type.
10 years before the NASA's Mars Sample Return mission is set to send back samples collected by the Perseverance rover, we know the geological context of the only brecciated Martian sample available on Earth.
The region where the 'Black Beauty' meteorite originated is critical because it contains the oldest Martian fragments ever found, which are 4.5 billion years old. Our planet lost its earliest environment because of plate tectonics and erosion, and the region we identify as being the source of this unique Martian meteorite sample constitutes a true window into the earliest environment of the planets.
The discovery was made thanks to an interdisciplinary group that included members of the School of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, as well as the Australian Space Data Analysis Facility, with funding from the Australian Research Council.
Researchers analyzed a large volume of high-resolution planetary images through machine learning to detect impact craters, using one of the fastest supercomputers in the Southern Hemisphere.
The research paved the way to locate the ejection site of other Martian meteorites in order to create the most comprehensive view of the Red Planet's geological history.
Black Beauty's point of ejection from Mars is one of the secrets that Professor Benedix is trying to uncover.
Experts from Paris-Saclay University, Paris Observatory, Muséum National d' Histoire Naturelle, the French National Center for Scientific Research, and the Félix Houphout-Boigny University were involved in the research.
The paper "Early crustal processes revealed by the ejection site of the oldest Martian meteorite" is in Nature Communications.
More information: Anthony Lagain, Early crustal processes revealed by the ejection site of the oldest martian meteorite, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-31444-8. www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-31444-8 Journal information: Nature Communications
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