Digging deep on Mars

Curiosity Rover is digging deep into Martian rock, well, maybe not that deep. A drill will go just 2.5 inches into a fine grain piece of bed rock on Mars. The particles that come up off of the drill are very very fine, six thousandths of an inch in fact. This is the first time ever that a rock has been drilled on Mars and is important for scientists, because when we bring samples back from Mars it helps us hone our abilities to analyze these materials and refine models of what we expect to find. Also, two tiny moons of Pluto are begging for names. They are newly discovered and normally the discoverer would name the moon, but in this case they want to open the option up to the general public at www.plutorocks.com where you can vote on a list of names that relate to Greek mythology. And don’t miss what’s in the night sky this week. All this and more on this week’s Sky Talk.

Photo credit: NASA