Out of this world!


Shelter Island on Mars and its minder, Opportunity.

Islander Harold Thiers was the first to tell the Reporter last month that Shelter Island had found its way to Mars. 


“It’s amazing what a rover can find lying by the side of the road … .” That’s how Nancy Atkinson of Universe Today described the latest find of the Mars exploration rover, “Opportunity,” which followed shortly after the rover had left another discovery — a large meteorite named “Block Island.” The new, smaller meteorite, named “Shelter Island,” measures about 19 inches long, Ms. Atkinson wrote, and is likely to be made up of nickel and iron, same as its sister island meteorite.


But how come, we wondered in an email to Mr. Thiers, did two such familiar Island names end up on Mars? Mr. Thiers is quite the intrepid explorer himself and he set about to find out, working his way eventually to Guy Webster, the “press guy” of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Cal Tech.


Mr. Webster in turn explained that the teams responsible for the various explorations come up with a list of names along a particular theme as a way of keeping straight which discoveries they are talking about. “Island names is the theme for the rocks that Opportunity is finding during a long trek toward a large, distant crater” on Mars, he said. Both Shelter and Block islands were on a list of prospective names before the rover found the two meteorites.


Well, that certainly explained a lot, but out of thousands of islands to chose from, why ours?


Within a few days, Mr. Thiers heard again from Mr. Webster. It turns out that Dr. Scott McLennan a member of the Geosciences Department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook is a member of the science team for NASA’s rover project on Mars. He was also serving as the lead for the rover “Opportunity” a few days after Opportunity had left Block Island only to find the second meteorite nearby. It made sense, he told Mr. Webster, to name that one for a nearby island.


Besides which, Mr. Webster told Mr. Thiers, Dr. McLennan is very familiar with Shelter Island where, upon occasion, he can be found hiking.


Our thanks to Harold Thiers — and our best wishes to our new outpost on Mars.