NASA’s Curiosity rover has encountered a massive iron meteorite on Mars. At roughly two meters (6.5 feet) wide, and who knows how much beneath the surface, the meteorite (dubbed “Lebanon”) might be the largest ever discovered on Mars. In other news, Curiosity recently celebrated its first Martian anniversary on the Red Planet (almost two Earth years), and is now about two thirds of the way to its primary target of Mount Sharp, which it should reach in early 2015. Perhaps most interestingly, Curiosity recently passed into a region of terrain that is much more likely to yield exciting geology data and dramatic photos of the Martian landscape.
The supermassive black hole is 40 million times as massive as the sun and powers a quasar that existed 700 million years after the Big Bang.
The asteroid zoomed by Earth at a perfectly safe distance of around 1.8 million miles (2.9 kilometers).
Images show surprise changes to the spacecraft as it interacted with the atmosphere.
