 The Mars Exploration missions launched in 2003, successfully landing two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity on the Red Planet. The mission's objective was to search for clues to pass water activity on Mars. The mission also included three previous landers, the two Viking program landers in 1976 and Mars Pathfinder probe in 1997. Both rovers were given an expected lifespan of just 90 days due to the notorious dust storms present on the surface. Spirit lasted an incredible seven years, surviving until 2010, yet mysteriously Opportunity is still functioning to this day. This is due to several events which have become known as cleaning events, which over that last 14 years have been mysteriously cleaning the rover's solar panels. Designed to go offline during the night to save energy, it is during these hours that something, or someone, has been helping to keep our rovers running. Opportunity has since been given five mission extensions, which it has successfully completed. In July 2007, during the fourth mission extension, severe Martian dust storms blocked sunlight to the rover and threatened the ability of the craft's survival. However, when the dust storms lifted, they revealed that something had cleaned the rover of nearly all debris. On May 1, 2009, during its fifth mission extension, Spirit became stuck in the soft soils of Mars. After nearly nine months of attempts to get the rover back on track, including test rovers on Earth, NASA announced on January 26, 2010, that Spirit was re-tasked as a stationary science platform. Strangely it seems, because the rover was not moving, it missed subsequent cleaning events, leading NASA to lose contact shortly after. Just recently, Opportunity has seen a surge in energy after a cleaning event in March. The Martian month coincidentally resulting in a power boost of 70% when compared with power levels at the start of this year. And now, mission scientists have released a self-portrait photo of the Mars rover. When compared with the dust coverage at its worst, the difference is nothing short of dramatic. Having just survived its sixth Mars winner, thanks to the most recent cleaning event, Curiosity now has solar panels that are as dust-free as they were when they entered the Martian atmosphere. Just what exactly has been cleaning the rovers on Mars? Covert astronauts? Or maybe it's aliens? Whatever it is, we may never know. Now, I'd like to go on to the next graphic, and let's linger on this one a moment, because this is worth looking at. This is a very strange pair of images. These are two images. They were taken 12 days apart, and this just happened. I mean, this is going on right now. This is where Opportunity is currently parked, and you can see, 12 days apart, a rock just simply appeared. 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 Squires, 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. Using the rover head 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've ever seen before. It's very high in sulfur, very high in magnesium. It has twice as much manganese than anything we've seen on Mars, said Squires 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. Squires 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 a 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 rover's six wheels during its recent drive. This is regardless of Squires' 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 rover's direction? We already have the rover's 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. Could 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 founded. Squires 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. If there's something very important to be developed from the moon, together we can explore the moon and develop the moon. We should go boldly where man has not gone before. Fly by to comets, visit asteroids, visit the moon of Mars. There's a monolith. They are a very unusual structure on this little potato shaped object that goes around Mars once in seven hours. When people find out about that, they're going to say, who put that there? Who put that there?