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A field party from the U.S. Antarctic Search for Meteorites program (ANSMET) found the new specimen on 15 December 2003, on an ice field in the Miller Range of the Transantarctic Mountains, roughly 750 kilometres from the South Pole. This 715.2-gram black rock, officially designated MIL 03346, was one of 1358 meteorites collected by ANSMET during the 2003-2004 summer expedition.
Image: NASA.
Discovery of this meteorite occurred during the second full field season of a cooperative effort funded by NASA and supported by the National Science Foundation to enhance recovery of rare meteorite types in Antarctica, in the hopes new Martian samples would be found.
Scientists at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History involved in classification of Antarctic finds said the mineralogy, texture and the oxidized nature of the rock are unmistakably Martian. The new specimen is the seventh recognized member of a group of Martian meteorites called the nakhlites, named after the first known specimen that fell in Nakhla, Egypt, in 1911.
Like the other Martian meteorites, MIL 03346 is a piece of the Red Planet that can be studied in detail in the laboratory, providing a critical "reality check" for use in interpreting the wealth of images and data being returned by the spacecraft currently exploring Mars. Following the existing protocols of the U.S. Antarctic meteorite program, scientists from around the world will be invited to request samples of the new specimen for their own detailed research.
Nakhlites are thought to have originated within thick lava flows that crystallized on Mars approximately 1.3 billion years ago, and sent to Earth by a meteorite impact about eleven million years ago, the nakhlites are among the older known Martian meteorites. As a result they bear witness to significant segments of the volcanic and environmental history of Mars.
More info: MIL 03346
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