But the offer of the third-largest piece of Mars on Earth failed to make an impact at the auction house’s annual sale of unusual meteorites.

The buyer paid US$21,420 for the eight-by-four centimetres carbonaceous chondrite stone that landed in the garden of dog Roky’s owner’s home in Aguas Zarcas in April 2019.

The wood and tin doghouse itself, complete with an 18cm hole marking where the meteorite punctured the roof, sold separately for US$44,100, Christie’s said.

That was much less than the pre-sale estimates of between US$200,000 and US$300,000.

A bidder paid US$189,000 for a chunk of lunar rock that was discovered in Morocco in 2007, below pre-sale estimates of up to US$300,000.

Another slice of the Moon – found in the Sahara desert in Mauritania – fetched US$69,300 during the two-week online sale that ended Wednesday.

It was a disappointing auction for Mars, though. The 9.1 kg Martian rock had been priced at between US$500,000 and US$800,000 but failed to find a buyer.