Monisha Ravisetti is Space.com's Astronomy Editor
— it could be yours for $4 million (or more)
NEW YORK CITY — Tucked away in a building on the corner of 72nd Street and York Avenue in Lenox Hill, an extraterrestrial marvel sits sturdily on a mirrored pedestal. It's the largest Mars rock on planet Earth — and it turns out its 54-pound (25-kilogram), ashy, terracotta structure isn't as priceless as you'd expect.
"This Mars rock is up for auction at Sotheby's in New York City this week, which is why it's currently on display in the Upper East Side. As of now, it's expected to sell for between $2 million and $4 million, but it could very well sell for far more.
" 'At the end of the day, it's the bidders who tell us what things are worth, not me, not anyone else. The estimates are just there to give people an indication," Cassandra Hatton, the vice chairman of science and natural history at Sotheby's, told Space.com. "Last summer, I sold the Stegosaurus 'Apex.' For the Stegosaurus, the estimate was [$4 million to $6 million], and it sold for $44.6 million." . . .
. . . "Because of this journey, Martian atmospheric data is important to consider when verifying whether something is a Mars rock — and thanks to the twin Viking landers that NASA sent to Mars in the '70s, scientists indeed have that atmospheric data.
" 'You'll find little gas pockets in a lot of Martian meteorites," Hatton said. "We've cut those pockets open and compared the gas in those pockets to the gas that we analyzed from the Martian atmosphere — and if they match up, then we know that rock came from Mars.' " . . .
Monisha Ravisetti is Space.com's Astronomy Editor. She covers black holes, star explosions, gravitational waves, exoplanet discoveries and other enigmas hidden across the fabric of space and time. Previously, she was a science writer at CNET, and before that, reported for The Academic Times. Prior to becoming a writer, she was an immunology researcher at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. She graduated from New York University in 2018 with a B.A. in philosophy, physics and chemistry
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