WGNO

Strange ‘shiny’ object found on Mars by NASA rover

“Little Colonsay” (NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL)

A strange, shiny object was discovered on Mars by NASA’s Curiosity rover, the Curiosity team said in an an update to its missing blog last week.

The team has nicknamed the object “Little Colonsay.”

“The planning team thinks it might be a meteorite because it is so shiny,” the team wrote. “But looks can deceive, and proof will only come from the chemistry.”

Curiosity has a tool called ChemCam, which will be used to study the object.

The rover has been on the Martian surface since Aug. 6, 2012.

NASA’s InSight lander touched down on Mars last week.

InSight, or Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is going to explore a part of Mars that we know the least about: its deep interior. It launched May 5. InSight will spend two years investigating the interior where the building blocks below the planet’s surface recorded its history.