NASA's Curiosity rover discovers mysterious shiny object on Mars; What it could be?

Mars Shiny object
NASA

NASA's Curiosity rover that has been conducting exploration on Mars has recently discovered a shiny object on the Red Planet's surface. Experts at the US space agency has named this shiny piece of rock 'Little Colonsay' and they believe that it could be a meteorite.

However, scientists will confirm this speculation only after Curiosity completes the chemical analysis of the rock. During the analysis, Curiosity will use its ChemCam instruments comprised of a laser, spectrograph and various other advanced instruments to understand more about the shiny rock.

Even though the shiny nature of the object suggests that it could be the remnants of a meteorite, NASA believes that sometimes looks could be deceiving.

"One of the samples that we try to get a better look at is 'Little Colonsay. The planning team thinks it might be a meteorite because it is so shiny. But looks can deceive, and the proof will only come from the chemistry," wrote NASA on a recent blog.

This is not the first time that NASA's Curiosity rover is discovering mysterious shiny objects on the Martian surface. In 2014, NASA discovered a shiny piece of rock which was later proved to be an iron meteorite. Later, in 2015, NASA discovered a similar object which turned out to be a nickel-iron meteorite.

In the meantime, a section of Flat Earthers has started arguing that NASA's Mars landing is a manipulated hoax. These conspiracy theorists claim that NASA is intentionally misdirecting the general public for unknown motives.

Recently, popular British flat earth believer Gary John argued that NASA does not have that advanced capabilities to control a rover, considering the mammoth distance between earth and mars. Flat earth believers also claim that most of the NASA's deep space missions might have been shot in well equipped Hollywood movie shooting sets.

This article was first published on December 2, 2018
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