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MAMA Exhibits Mars Rock !   

If you have been watching the news recently, you can't help but notice that NASA's Mars Pathfinder has been an incredible success. If you want to see what is happening in the news with the Pathfinder these are two sources on the Web that have current information on the status of the mission. CNN and Mars Pathfinder Mission at JPL. As long as the news is current you can find links through most search engines. Yahoo has a very good listing of current events on Mars.

A little teensy-weensie piece of rock - a meteorite from Mars - has fallen into its stunning new home - an Anderson-Smith Martian landscape diorama - at the Museum of Ancient and Modern Art in Penn Valley. Visitors can witness with their own eyes a piece of the rock that is causing such a profound stir throughout the world.

This summer NASA scientists announced that they have evidence strongly suggesting the existence of life on Mars! They determined this from a chunk of neteorite found in the Antartic in 1974. Now collectors can't get their hands on enough of the stuff. Only 90 pounds of Mars rock have landed since time immemorial so there isn't quite enough to perform sufficient scientific tests on. The cost of retrieving a pound of Mars rock with a Mars lander mission has been estimated at between $5 and $8 billion US.

When the only known private collection of all three types of Mars rock go up for auction at Guernsey's on Nov. 20th in New York, they are expected to sell for $1.5 to $2 million US. With the need for samples and the price so high and the availability so low it is indeed amazing that any Mars rock is available for small museums at all. Only 8 pounds remain available planetwide to be shared among thousands of educational institutions.

The Martian meteorite on display at MAMA is from the same source as the meteorites about to be sold at Guernsey's in New York. It is a SNC (pronounced "snick") meteorite. (The name SNC comes from the first letter of the names of the three landing sites. The Shergotty meteorite fell in India in 1865, the Nakhla meteorite fell in Egypt in 1911 and the Chassigny meteorite fell in France in 1815.) These meteorites traveled 49 million years to Earth over a period of thirteen thousand years. They hung in space until the Earth collided into them and then they descended to the Earth's surface.

Beginning December 1, teachers will also be able to schedule MAMA's TAP (Traveling Art Program) Tour, "The Martians Have Landed! Meteorites from Mars" at schools throughout five neighboring counties. Students will be focusing on the SNC Meteorites, the science of meteorites, their historical significance, with a special emphasis on the most recent discoveries related to life on Mars.