The largest Martian rock ever to fall to Earth will be auctioned off by Sotheby’s later this month. The British auction house expects the Mars meteorite NWA 16788 to fetch millions.
The rock is approximately 37 centimeters long, 28 centimeters high, and 15 centimeters thick, and weighs around 25 kilos. This makes it almost twice as heavy as the next-largest Martian rock to have ever landed on Earth. The rock was found in November 2023 by a meteorite hunter in Agadez. That is a remote region of Niger located in the Sahara Desert.
Researchers from the Shanghai Astronomy Museum have confirmed that the rock originated from Mars. The reddish-brown rock showed little sign of weathering on Earth. It is therefore likely that it recently fell to Earth.
The researchers believe that the rock was flung into space by a collision of an asteroid with the surface of Mars. “That started its 225 million kilometer journey through space, before it flew through the Earth’s atmosphere and crashed into the Sahara,” writes Sotheby’s.
The average distance between the Earth and Mars is 225 million kilometers, but the planets can approach each other to within about 55 million kilometers. The furthest distance between them can be up to about 400 million kilometers.
Bidding on the space rock starts at $1.6 million (almost €1.4 million), but the auction house expects the rock to fetch between $2 and $4 million (€1.7 to €3.4 million). The auction will be organized on July 16.
Scientists have criticized the fact that the Martian rock is being auctioned. They would prefer the rock to be donated to a museum and studied. “It would be a shame if this rock disappeared into the vault of an oligarch or wealthy collector,” one scientist told CNN.