NEW YORK – The largest chunk of Mars ever discovered on Earth sold at a Sotheby’s auction Wednesday for $5.3 million to an undisclosed bidder.
The Martian meteorite, identified as NWA 16788, was first discovered in Africa’s Sahara Desert back in November 2023 by a meteorite hunter, according to the Meteoritical Society.
Space experts believe the giant rock was dislodged from the Red Planet’s surface by an asteroid impact, causing the Martian mass to travel 140 million miles before crashing into Earth’s surface.
“NWA 16788 is a discovery of extraordinary significance – the largest Martian meteorite ever found on Earth, and the most valuable of its kind ever offered at auction,” Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman of science & natural history at Sotheby’s, said in a statement.
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NEW YORK, NY – JULY 15: NWA 16788, the largest ever Martian meteorite, is on display before auction at Sotheby’s New York on July 15, 2025 in New York City. NWA 16788, the largest piece of Mars on Earth, is expected to fetch between 2 million and 4 million US dollars during the auction on July 16 in New York City.
(Photo by Liao Pan/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images) -
The 54-pound Martian meteorite NWA 16788, the largest known piece of Mars ever discovered on Earth, is displayed during a Sotheby’s auction preview in New York on July 15, 2025. The Martian meteorite will be auctioned off by Sotheby’s New York on July 16, 2025.
(Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)
SEE THE OBJECTS HUMANS LEFT BEHIND ON THE MOON
According to the international auction house, the 54-pound meteorite is some 70% larger than the second largest known piece of Martian.
It is not clear when the reddish, gray meteorite crashed into Earth and experts were only able to confirm its identity when comparing it with data collected during NASA’s Viking lander mission in 1976.
“NWA 16788 is an olivine-microgabbroic shergottite, formed from the slow cooling of Martian magma and characterized by a course-grained texture composed primarily of pyroxene, maskelynite and olivine. A significant percentage (21.2% by volume) of NWA 16788 is composed of a glass known as maskelynite, produced when an asteroid struck the Martian surface with such force that it metamorphosed the rock’s original feldspar through intense heat and pressure,” researchers at Sotheby stated.
NASA DEVELOPS “MOON DUSTER” TO ZAP AWAY LUNAR DUST
Out of some 77,000 meteorites that have been identified on Earth, only about 400 are thought to have originated from Mars.
Also drawing attention at Wednesday’s auction were the remains of a dinosaur that sold for north of $30 million.
The fossilized remains of the Ceratosaurus nasicornis stand over six feet tall and was originally discovered in 1996 during an excavation in Wyoming.
The skelton is said to date back to the Jurassic period, around 150 million years ago.
The Sharpest View Of Mars Ever Taken From Earth Was Obtained By The Recently Refurbished Nasa Hubble Space Telescope (Hst). This Stunning Portrait Was Taken With The Hst Wide Field Planetary Camera-2 (Wfpc2) On March 10, 1997, Just Before Mars Opposition, When The Red Planet Made One Of Its Closest Passes To The Earth (About 60 Million Miles Or 100 Million Km)
(Photo By Nasa/Getty Images / Getty Images)
