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Practically overnight, an unexplained piece of rock has shown up on photos from NASA's Mars rover Opportunity, according to the digital Russian TV network RT (Russia Today). The rover hasn't moved in over a month, as it waits for better weather, but a photo taken on Sol 3540 (Jan. 8, or the 3,540th Martian solar day since the Opportunity rover landed) shows a rock that wasn't visible in previous photos taken on Sol 3536. ... Staffers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California who maintain the rover camera (pancam) database for NASA have named the rock Pinnacle Island.

Lead Mars Exploration rover scientist Steve Squyres describes the rock as looking like a large jelly donut, explaining: ““It looks white around the edge in the middle and there’s a low spot in the center that’s dark red – it looks like a jelly doughnut.” ” The instruments on NASA's Opportunity rover that are analyzing the rock are sending back to Earth data that is as mysterious as the jelly donut-like rock itself. Squyres says: “It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before. It’s very high in sulphur, it’s very high in magnesium, its got twice as much manganese as we’ve...