On January 8th 2014, a strange Mars rock was spotted by Opportunity resting in a spot where earlier, there was nothing but soil.
The rock, which scientists now call Pinnacle Island, is in the shape of a doughnut, white on the outside, red in the middle, it appeared after Opportunity had just finished a short drive.
"It looks like a jelly doughnut," said Steve Squyres, the rover's lead scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, during a recent NASA event marking Opportunity's 10th year on Mars. " it appeared, it just plain appeared at that spot, and we haven't driven over that spot.
Strangely, NASA has remained pretty silent in regards to the details of the find for the past few years, only recently coming forward to claim they had solved the mystery of its sudden appearance. Claiming the rover had indeed disturbed the rock somehow.
The odd rock is located in a spot on "Murray Ridge" along the wall of Endeavour Crater where Opportunity spent the Martian winter.
A closer look at the rock using Opportunity's robotic arm-mounted instruments has revealed, quote, "It's like nothing we ever seen before. It's very high in sulphur, very high in magnesium, it has twice as much manganese than anything we've seen on Mars," said Squyres with excitement during an event in January.
"I don't know what any of this means. We're completely confused, but we're having a wonderful time." He stated.
Squyres said rover scientists have two working theories on how the Pinnacle Island rock mysteriously appeared near Opportunity. One suggests that the rock is a piece of debris from an meteorite impact somewhere near the rover that just so happened to land in front of Opportunity. While the other theory is that the rock was somehow kicked up by one of the rover's six wheels during its recent drive.
This is regardless of squyres original comment regarding the rover not having previously traversing that particular area.
Did something actually throw this very interesting, and possibly extremely important rock in the rovers direction.
We already have the rovers mysterious cleaning events which have occurred on many occasions, with every strange event that occurs on mars, the possibility of outside help from an intelligent entity, becomes less absurd.
Did an alien, or possibly covert astronauts throw us a bone in the form of a stone?
We may never know where the rock came from, but we should all be thankful the rover found it.
Squyres said the weird Mars rock is an example of how the Red Planet keeps surprising scientists, even 10 years later. He finished by saying, Quote,
"Mars keeps throwing new things at us,"
As always, thanks for watching guys, and until next time, take care.
