One lucky bidder will soon fork over millions of dollars to take home NWA 16788, a 54-pound (24-kilogram) Martian meteorite. This space rock, discovered in the Sahara Desert in 2023, is the largest chunk of the Red Planet ever found on Earth.
Sotheby’s, a New York-based auction house, estimates the meteorite could fetch up to $4 million during its natural history sale on Wednesday, July 16. Bidding starts at a cool $1.9 million. Sotheby’s describes NWA 16788 as an “incredibly rare discovery” that traveled 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) through space before plunging into Earth’s atmosphere and crash-landing in the desert. Based on its composition, scientists believe a powerful asteroid impact dislodged this meteorite from the surface of Mars.
“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 for science and natural history at Sotheby’s, said in a statement. “This remarkable meteorite provides a tangible connection to the red planet—our celestial neighbor that has long captured the human imagination.”
The reddish-brown boulder is roughly 70% bigger than the next-largest piece of Mars found on Earth, which makes it a singular find among an incredibly rare class of geologic specimens. According to Sotheby’s, only 400 of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites come from Mars. The auction house estimates that this single rock represents roughly 6.5% of the total mass of all known Martian material on Earth.
A meteorite hunter discovered NWA 16788 exactly two years before its auction date while searching for space rocks in the Kefkaf region of Niger, according to The Meteorological Society. The organization documented its physical characteristics as a “grey to brown exterior surface partially covered with a grey to brownish fusion crust.”
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