Blockchain technology on the rise in Vietnam – OpenGov Asia

New Curtin-led research has found the exact home of the oldest and best-known Martian meteorite for the first time ever, providing critical geological clues about Mars’ earliest origins.

Using an interdisciplinary approach involving a machine learning algorithm, the new research was published today in Nature communication – identified the crater on Mars that ejected the so-called ‘Black Beauty’ meteorite, which weighed 320 grams, and the pair of rocks, which were first found in North Africa in 2011. The researchers have named the specific Martian crater after the Pilbara town of Karratha , located more than 1,500 km north of Perth in Western Australia, is home to one of the oldest terrestrial rocks.

The discovery was made using an algorithm developed in-house at Curtin by an interdisciplinary team that included members from the Curtin Institute for Computation and the School of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, as well as the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Center and the Australian Space Data Analysis Facility, with funding from the Australian Research Council.

Using one of the fastest supercomputers in the Southern Hemisphere at the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre, and the Curtin HIVE (Hub for Immersive Visualization and eResearch), researchers analyzed a huge volume of high-resolution planetary images through a machine learning algorithm to detect impact craters.

The paper’s lead author Dr Anthony Lagain, from Curtin’s Space Science and Technology Center in the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said the exciting discovery provided never-before-known details about the much-studied Martian meteorite NWA 7034, known as ‘Black Beauty’ worldwide. Black Beauty is the only brecciated Martian sample available on Earth, meaning it contains angular fragments of multiple rock types cemented together that are different from all other Martian meteorites that contain single rocks.

For the first time, the geological context of the only brecciated Mars sample available on Earth is now known, 10 years before NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission is set to send back samples collected by the Perseverance rover currently exploring the Jezero crater, said Dr Lagain.

The scientist noted that identifying the area of ​​origin of the ‘Black Beauty’ meteorite is crucial as it contains the oldest Martian fragments ever found, at 4.48 billion years old, and it shows similarities between Mars’ very old crust , at an age of about 4.53 billion years. old, and today’s continents. The region the team identified as the source of this unique Martian meteorite sample provides a true window into the earliest environment of the planets, including Earth, which our planet lost to plate tectonics and erosion.

Co-author Professor Gretchen Benedix, also from Curtin’s Space Science and Technology Center in the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said this research paved the way for locating the ejection site of other Martian meteorites, creating the most exhaustive view of the red planet’s geological history .

The team is also modifying the algorithm used to find Black Beauty’s ejection point from Mars to unlock other secrets from the Moon and Mercury. It is hoped that this will help determine their geological history and answer burning questions that will help future explorations of the solar system, such as the Artemis program to send humans to the Moon by the end of the decade or the BepiColombo mission, orbiting Mercury in 2025.

The research also involved experts from Paris-Saclay University, the Paris Observatory, the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, the French National Center for Scientific Research, Félix Houphouët-Boigny University in the Ivory Coast and Northern Arizona University and Rutgers University in the United States of America.