After 5 years on Mars, NASA's Perseverance rover may have found its 1st meteorite (photos)

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has found a possible meteorite on the surface of the Red Planet.

Perseverance spotted an unusual "sculpted, high-standing" rock nestled among "low-lying, flat and fragmented surrounding rocks", which got the attention of scientists right away, according to a blog post posted Nov. 13 on NASA's website written by Candice Bedford, a research scientist at Purdue University. The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory rover spotted Phippsaksla on Sept. 2, initially using the left Mastcam-Z camera high on the rover's mast. Sept. 2 was Sol 1612 of the mission; a sol is a Martian day, which is slightly longer than Earth's.

Perseverance next used its laser instrument, known as SuperCam, to show that the nearly three-foot-long (31 inches, or 81 centimeters) rock is made of ir