Nasa names moving rock on Mars after Rolling Stones
Space agency calls golf ball-sized rock 'Rolling Stones Rock' after it moved one metre across the Martian surface
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Your support makes all the difference.Nasa has honoured the Rolling Stones by naming a small Martian rock after the London band.
The US space agency decided to call the golf ball-sized rock 'Rolling Stones Rock' after it appeared to move around 1 metre across the surface of Mars on 26 November, 2018.
It was propelled by the spacecraft InSight's thrusters as it touched down on the Red Planet last year for its latest mission.
Rolling Stones Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood said they were happy with the news.
"This is definitely a milestone in our long and eventful history," they commented. "A huge thank you to everyone at Nasa for making it happen."
Nasa said it was the farthest it had ever seen a rock roll while landing a spacecraft on another planet.
Nasa geologist Matt Golombek, who helped with the Insight mission, was responsible for the rock's unofficial nickname, which will appear on working maps of Mars.
"I've seen a lot of Mars rocks over my career," he said. "This one probably won't be in a lot of scientific papers, but it's definitely one of the coolest."
Nasa hopes to one day send manned missions to Mars, most likely in collaboration with private space firms like SpaceX.
Earlier this week, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk once again reiterated his ideas to terraform Mars and make it habitable for humans.
The first involves detonating nuclear weapons over the planet's poles to artificially heat up the surface in order to turn it into an Earth-like planet.
The second idea involves putting in place thousands of giant mirrors in orbit around Mars which would reflect sunlight onto the planet.
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