Here’s How Much the ‘Largest Piece of Mars on Earth’ Sold for at Auction
No human has been to the planet of Mars, but a very wealthy individual will be able to come close after purchasing a massive chunk of the planet at an exclusive auction.
The largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth sold for just over $5 million on Wednesday during a Sotheby's auction.
The huge rock is a 54-pound meteorite that was first discovered in the Sahara Desert back in 2023. Scientists and experts believe an asteroid storm knocked the piece off the planet, sending it hurtling 140 million miles through space before landing on Earth.
The identity of the buyer was not disclosed, but their final bid came in at $4.3 million. After fees and costs, the official number settled in at $5.3 million for the meteorite.
The meteorite is around 70% larger than the next biggest piece of Mars on Earth, and it represents around 7% of the entirety of Martian material on planet Earth. The meteorite measures at 15 inches by 11 inches by 6 inches, and is one of approximately only 400 Martian meteorites on the planet.
“This Martian meteorite is the largest piece of Mars we have ever found by a long shot,” said Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby's vice president or science and natural history.
“So it’s more than double the size of what we previously thought was the largest piece of Mars.”
Hatton noted that a team was able to examine a piece of the meteorite in a small lab, comparing it to the chemical composition of Martian material discovered by the Viking space probe in the 1970s.
That examination found that the rock is an “olivine-microgabbroic shergottite,” a type of rock formed by the slow cooling of magma on the Martian surface. Before Wednesday's auction and the resulting sale, the meteorite was previously on display at the Italian Space Agency in Rome.
The meteorite sold for an impressive price at the auction, but it wasn't the most expensive item to be sold.
Bidding for a juvenile Ceratosaurus nasicornis dinosaur skeleton started at $6 million and ended at an astonishing $30.5 million bid after the addition of fees and costs.