Meet Lebanon, an iron meteorite that NASA's Curiosity rover ran into on its 640th sol (Martian day) on Mars. Back here on Earth, it was May 25, 2014.
Advertisement
It's not clear why Curiosity's engineers named this hunk o' rock "Lebanon." Maybe it's a reference to the Middle Eastern country, which is sort of shaped like this. Other Martian iron meteorites have also received geographic names, including Block Island and Oileán Ruaidh, which is the Gaelic name for an island off the coast of Ireland.
This article originally appeared on Popular Science
