The largest Mars meteorite ever found on Earth was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York on Wednesday for $5.3 million.
The Martian rock, known as NWA 16788, weighs more than 54 pounds, is nearly 15 inches long and is 70% larger than the next biggest piece of Mars that has been recovered, according to the auction house.
Sotheby’s said the piece broke from the surface of Mars following a recent asteroid strike and traveled more than 140 million miles across the Solar System.
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It crashed in the Sahara Desert in the Agadez region of Nigeria and was found by a meteorite hunter in November 2023, Sotheby’s said.
“This is the largest piece of Mars on planet Earth. The odds of this getting from there to here are astronomically small,” Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman of science and natural history at Sotheby’s, said in a video posted online. “Remember that approximately 70% of Earth’s surface is covered in water. So we’re incredibly lucky that this landed on dry land instead of the middle of the ocean where we could actually find it.”
The original bid was $4.3 million. With fees and additional costs, the total price of the rock increases to about $5.3 million, according to the auction house.
The auction house said the reddish brown rock is “unbelievably rare” because meteorites from Mars make up just 400 of the 77,000 officially recognized meteorites. According to Sotheby’s, the rock that was sold represents 6.5% of all Martian material currently on Earth.
Hatton said a sample of the rock was sent to a specialized laboratory to be tested for Maskelynite glass, which is only found in meteorites.
Testing determined the rock is an olivine-gabbroic shergottite, which is a relatively new type of Martian meteorite, according to an April 2024 report from researchers the U.S. and Canada. It was formed from the as magma on Mars slowly cooled, Sotheby’s said, and contains materials such as olivine, which is also found in Earth’s upper mantle.
“This isn’t just a miraculous find, but a massive data set that can help us unlock the secrets of our neighbor, the red planet,” Hatton said.
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Prior to going up for auction at Sotheby’s, the rock was in a public exhibit at the Italian Space Agency in Rome during the 2024 European Researchers’ Night and in a private gallery in Arezzo, Tuscany.
It’s unclear who the current owner is and if the Martian rock will be in a public or a private collection.
Also up for auction was a Ceratosaurus skeleton from the late Jurassic period, about 154 to 149 million years ago, which was sold for $26 million, and the skull of a Pachycephalosaurus from the late Cretaceous period 72 million to 66 million years ago for $1.4 million.
Wednesday’s auction, containing 122 items, is part of Sotheby’s Geek Week, which holds sales for items related to natural history, the history of science and technology, and space exploration.
Among the items up for sale on Thursday, the final day of Geek Week, include a first generation of Apple-1 computer from the first batch of 50 built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976.
