Martian Meteorite News

December 25, 2010: A brand-new Martian meteorite find from the deserts of Northwest Africa has just been officially approved by the Meteoritical Society:

Northwest Africa 6162 - o-SHE - TKW 89g

NWA 6162 was discovered in March 2010 near Lbirat in southern Morocco, and it certainly is one of the most fresh desert meteorite finds. Texturally it resembles the olivine-phyric shergottites of the SaU 005 pairing group from Oman - just compare NWA 6162 with SaU 120, the freshest sample of the SaU group.

April 10, 2010: A few fascinating papers on two new Martian meteorites have been published at the 41st LPSC in March 2010:

Northwest Africa 5990 - b-SHE - TKW 59g

NWA 5990 is a new olivine-bearing diabasic shergottite, and Anthony Irving et al published a paper about the Petrology and composition of a new type of depleted Martian igneous rock - a great read with many pictures of this new Martian which is more coarse-grained than most other shergottites and also more olivine-rich without being a porphyritic rock.

Northwest Africa 5790 - NAK - TKW 145g

Several abstracts were published on the new nakhlite NWA 5790 such as NWA 5790, Top sequence of the nakhlite pile by Albert Jambon et al, Sm-Nd isotopic studies of two nakhlites, NWA 5790 and Nakhla by C.-Y. Shih et al, as well as A cathodoluminescence study of silica and K-feldspar in the nakhlites MIL 03346 and NWA 5790 by Hasnaa Chennaoui Aoudjehane et al. All these studies show that NWA 5790 is a very special, mesostasis-rich representative of the nakhlite group. >> continue to archive >>