PASADENA, Calif. – With drives on July 4 and July 7, NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has departed its last science target in the “Glenelg” area and commenced a many-month overland journey to the base of the mission’s main destination, Mount Sharp.

The rover finished close-up investigation of a target sedimentary outcrop called “Shaler” last week. On July 4, it drove 59 feet (18 meters) away from Shaler. On July 7, a second drive added another 131 feet (40 meters) on the trip toward a destination about 5 miles (8 kilometers) away, the entry to the lower layers of Mount Sharp.

Mount Sharp, in the middle of Gale Crater, exposes many layers where scientists anticipate finding evidence about how the ancient Martian environment changed and evolved.  In the Glenelg area, where Curiosity worked for the first half of 2013, the rover found evidence for an ancient wet environment that had conditions favorable for microbial life. This means the mission already accomplished its main science objective.

via Mars Rover Curiosity Begins Trek Toward Mount Sharp | NASA.

Here is this weeks Eyes on The Sky Video

FLIPPING FIELD: An artist’s impression of the star Tau Boo, along with its magnetic field, and the exoplanet Tau Boo b.

Image: Karen Teramura/IfA

The relationship between stars and planets is usually rather one-directional—the star rules over its celestial subjects, blasting them with radiation, blessing them with warmth. The puny planets simply take what they get. But sometimes a planet is so massive, and so close to its star, that the smaller object can exert considerable influence on its stellar neighbor.

Such is the case with the planet orbiting the star Tau Boötis—Tau Boo for short. The giant world, six times the mass of Jupiter, was discovered in 1996 circling the bright star some 50 light-years from the sun. Tau Boo b, as the planet is known, passes so close to the star in its orbit—less than one twentieth the distance between Earth and the sun—that it drags the stellar surface along with it, thereby synchronizing the rotation of the star with the orbit of the planet.

via Star Entangled with Its Giant Planet Experiences Hyperactive Magnetic Cycle: Scientific American.