Mystery rock spotted on Mars

• A mysterious rock, shaped and sized like a doughnut, has appeared on Mars


• The rover Opportunity is studying the rock


• Rock appeared in photo, 12 days after previous photo showed no rock


• Opportunity has been exploring Mars since January 2004

(CNN) -- Did Mars rover Opportunity order a jelly doughnut?

Not quite, but scientists are baffled by a white rock with a dark red low spot in the middle that "just plain appeared at that spot" on the planet where the rover is situated, says Steve Squyres, lead scientist of the Mars Exploration Rover mission.

In recent weeks, Opportunity took photos of the same spot on Mars, 12 days apart. The rover's panoramic camera showed only barren bedrock on mission day 3528 (in Mars time), but on day 3540, a photo of the same scene revealed the mysterious, doughnut-shaped rock.

Squyres showed photos of this ghostly geological dessert at a recent NASA event celebrating 10 years since the Spirit and Opportunity rovers landed on Mars.

Spirit's mission ended in 2010 after losing the use of two wheels, and ceasing to communicate. But Opportunity is still chugging along and finding new surprises, such as this rock.

"One of the things I like to say is that Mars keeps throwing new things at us," Squyres said at the event, gesturing toward the rock photo and laughing.

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NASA: Watch the presentation

The photos of the outcrop showing the absence, and then presence, of the pastry-sized rock were taken 12 days apart. The rover had not driven over that spot, Squyres said.

There are two leading theories about where the rock, called "Pinnacle Island," came from. Neither of them include the possibility of an intergalactic Dunkin' Donuts.

The most likely scenario is that Opportunity flicked the rock with one of its wheels.

"We had driven a meter or two away from here, and somehow maybe one of the wheels, kind of, managed to spit it out of the ground, and have it slide to this position," Squyres said.

Alternatively, there could be a smoking hole in the ground nearby and the rock could be a piece of crater ejecta, or piece of matter spewn from the impact of a meteorite. Squyres doesn't think this is as likely as the idea that the rover displaced the rock, however.

Opportunity is now studying the mystery rock more extensively, making measurements and taking pictures. Its instruments have shown scientists that the "jelly" part is "like nothing we've ever seen before," Squyres said. It's very high in sulfur and magnesium, and it has twice as much manganese as has ever been seen in anything on Mars.

No one knows what that means.

"We're completely confused, we're having a wonderful time, everyone on the team is arguing and fighting," Squyres said.

Spirit landed on January 4, 2004, followed by Opportunity on January 25, 2004. Their primary missions were designated for a mere 90 days, but both far outlasted that target.

Squyres said he used to think that no matter how long the rovers lasted, at some point there would be a point in the mission where the team could say "We're finished" -- that they had learned everything could about Mars with those particular vehicles.

But the Red Planet isn't like that.

"There will be something tantalizing, something wonderful just beyond our reach that we didn't quite get to, and that's the nature of exploration," he said.

Opportunity has otherwise encountered scientifically important phenomena during its decade of investigation. At Endeavor Crater, where it is today, the rover found clay minerals that form in watery conditions, and indicate that water with a neutral pH could have once been there, which would be conducive to microbial life if there had been any.

Endeavor has also unveiled veins of a mineral that appears to be gypsum, which is deposited by water.

Opportunity is not the only robot roaming Mars. NASA's 2-ton Curiosity rover, which landed in 2012, has an even more powerful suite of scientific instruments. Because of Curiosity's findings, NASA announced for the first time last year that life could have existed on Mars.

NASA is planning another rover mission in 2020 -- and that future robot could, possibly, collect samples that would later return to Earth for further study.

Such sophisticated technologies will help us see what other mysterious "sweets" the planet can deliver.

Follow Elizabeth Landau on Twitter at @lizlandau

Comet-chasing probe calls home

The spacecraft Rosetta was launched by the European Space Agency on March 2, 2004, for a 10-year mission to catch comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. After taking pictures of Earth, Mars and asteroids, Rosetta was put into hibernation in May 2011 after it reached the outer part of the solar system. Mission managers will wake it up on January 20.

Rosetta will be the first spacecraft to deploy a robot for a soft landing on a comet. It also will be the first probe to escort a comet into our inner solar system. This drawing shows how Rosetta will drop its robotic lander, Philae, onto the comet.

Rosetta is named after the Rosetta Stone, the black basalt that provided the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. Scientists hope the mission will give them new clues about the origins of the solar system and life on Earth. The mission is spearheaded by the European Space Agency with key support from NASA.

Traveling through space can be bumpy. Workers put Rosetta through vibration tests before wrapping it in thermal blankets before its launch.

Rosetta's solar wings are unfurled and checked out at the European Space Agency's test facilities.

A European Ariane 5 rocket, carrying Rosetta, lifts off from Kourou, French Guiana, on March 2, 2004.

Rosetta snapped this image of Earth in November 2009. The spacecraft was 393,328 miles from Earth.

After its closest approach to Earth in November 2007, Rosetta captured this image.

Rosetta took this image of Mars as it looped through the solar system.

This image was taken by an instrument on Rosetta's Philae lander just minutes before the spacecraft made its closest approach to Mars. Part of Rosetta and its solar arrays are visible.

Rosetta passed asteroid Steins in September 2008, giving scientists amazing close-ups of the asteroid's huge crater. The asteroid is about 3 miles in diameter.

On July 10, 2010, Rosetta flew about 1,864 feet from asteroid Lutetia, which is 10 times larger than asteroid Steins.

Look closely at the top of this picture. See that dot? That's Saturn. Rosetta snapped the picture of asteroid Lutetia and captured Saturn in the background.

On January 20, Rosetta will wake up, fire its engine and chase after comet 67P/Churyumov Gerasimenko as it hurtles by. This drawing shows how Rosetta will orbit the comet.

A drawing of the comet's nucleus. The nucleus, or rocky part of the comet, is thought to be about 2.5 miles miles wide.

Rosetta will release its robot lander Philae for a soft landing on the comet in November. It will fire harpoons to anchor itself to the comet. Scientists expect the lander to send back data to Earth for at least a week and possibly for many months as the comet heads toward the sun.

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• NEW: ESA's comet probe Rosetta wakes up, beams a signal back to Earth


• The spacecraft is nearly 500 million miles from the Sun, angling to rendezvous with a comet


• Scientist must now learn how to maneuver the craft around the environment of the comet


• Rosetta is set to meet up with the comet in August, follow it for two years

(CNN) -- Like a groggy traveler after a long, cold night, the European Space Agency's comet-chasing Rosetta spacecraft woke up, warmed up and called home Monday before setting off on the final leg of its journey.

Rosetta shook off 31 months of sleep, during which it traveled into the dark reaches of the solar system, and contacted its operators Monday evening. Cheers erupted in the ESA mission control center in Darmstadt, Germany, when a signal from Rosetta arrived shortly after 7 p.m. (1 p.m. ET).

"The spacecraft is there, it's awake, and I think we are all overwhelmed," mission manager Gerhard Schwehm told reporters. Now, he said, controllers will have "two busy years ahead of them" as it approaches its target, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and follows it around the sun.

There was only an hour window for the signal to reach Earth, putting scientists on pins and needles.

"The spacecraft decided to make us suffer after two and half year," Paolo Ferri, head of ESA Mission Operations told CNN. "We came almost to the end of the window, we were very tense," he said.

The unmanned probe was launched in 2004 and is now nearly 500 million miles (800 million kilometers) from the Sun -- a distance that puts it just past the orbit of Jupiter. At that distance, the message it beamed back took 45 minutes to arrive.

When the signal finally arrived there were cheers of relief.

Comet-chasing spacecraft 'wakes up'

Spacecraft wakes up to land on a comet

Comet-chasing probe wakes up after 2 years

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Wake up Rosetta: You have a date with a comet

If all goes well, Rosetta will rendezvous with the comet in August and fly with it for two years. Scientists now have to learn how to maneuver the craft around a comet.

"It's flying in a very unusual environment for space flight with gas and dust and not much gravity to keep your obit stable," Ferri said.

Rosetta is also supposed to send a small lander to the surface of the comet in November. The mission will give scientists unprecedented insight into the makeup and structure of these ancient residents of the solar system, ESA officials say.

"This is groundbreaking science," Rosetta project scientist Matt Taylor told ESA television. "We're looking at where we came from, the evolution of our own solar system. And comets are looked upon as kind of a time capsule back to the beginning of the solar system."

Scientists believe comets, composed of rock and ice, may have brought water and maybe even the primitive building blocks of life to Earth.

Rosetta carries 11 scientific instruments; its lander has 10 more.

ESA controllers ordered Rosetta to shut down most of its systems in June 2011 to save on power as it sailed through the darkest reaches of the solar system. The amount of sunlight reaching the solar-powered probe is only 4% that on Earth, according to ESA.

READ: 5 things we know about ISON

READ: ESA's Rosetta factsheet

Follow @CNNLightYears on Twitter for more space news

Supermodel is a beauty and a geek

Lyndsey Scott, 29, studied computer science in college before becoming a model.

• Lyndsey Scott models for Prada, Victoria's Secret, Calvin Klein


• She studied computer science in college and has built several apps for iOS platforms


• Scott: "We have this idea of people in technology being and looking a certain way"

Editor's note: Leading Women connects you to extraordinary women of our time -- remarkable professionals who have made it to the top in all areas of business, the arts, sport, culture, science and more.

(CNN) -- The term "software engineer" conjures images of pasty-faced young men with poor posture and limited social skills. And people think fashion models are all beauty and no brains.

At least, those are the stereotypes.

So what will the world make of Lyndsey Scott, a model for Prada and Victoria's Secret, who spends her spare time building mobile apps? The 29-year-old has appeared in major magazines like Harper's Bazaar, W and British Vogue, but seems more proud of getting her iPhone and iPad apps approved by Apple.

"With modeling, you never have control over anything," Scott told CNN. "So being able to have complete power with these apps I develop is very fulfilling."

Scott has built several apps for iOS platforms. Two are currently sold in the Apple store, and she's preparing to release a social networking app in coming weeks.

Scott: If it means being smart and being a good programmer, then "I have no problem being a nerd."

Before the self-taught programmer began modeling for high-end designers like Louis Vuitton, Prada, Gucci, Fendi and Vera Wang, she was an undiscovered New Jersey teen who loved playing calculator games.

In high school, she taught herself the software documentation and quickly learned how to program on her TI-89 calculator.

"I didn't realize I was even coding at that point," Scott said. "I first got into it just to make fun games and entertain myself."

Her game-coding skills didn't score her many points with her classmates, however. The 5-foot-9-inch model said she was a late bloomer and that growing up "is still hard to talk about" because of the bullying and taunting she endured.

"It got so bad in high school I couldn't even look people in the face," Scott said. "I would hide out in school so I wouldn't have to eat lunch in the cafeteria or see people in between classes."

At Amherst College, Scott learned coding languages Java, C++ and MIPS while majoring in theater and computer science. But instead of pursuing a programming career, she plunged into modeling.

She got her big modeling break in 2009 when she became the first African-American to land an exclusive contract with Calvin Klein for New York Fashion Week.

"It happened at a time when there was no interest in me as a model," she said. "I always dreamed of it, but I wasn't expecting it at all. I was beyond surprised."

That same year Scott was chosen for one of the year's most coveted fashion shows: Victoria's Secret. She said she was "shocked and honored" to join a lineup of supermodels including Heidi Klum, Miranda Kerr and Alessandra Ambrosio.

Meanwhile, she continued challenging expectations by teaching herself how to program Python and Objective-C.

"I think a lot of models thought I was strange having a computer on my lap in the middle of a casting line," Scott said. "I never really talked about programming in the modeling business. I kept the worlds very divided."

Scott's first iOS app was a charity-based project aimed at helping young scholars in Uganda. The app, Educate!, finds sponsors for Ugandan students and guides them toward becoming leaders and entrepreneurs.

"I learned about Educate! in college. It was an organization founded by two Amherst students. When I found out that Uganda has the youngest population in the world and the highest youth poverty rate, I wanted to get involved," she said.

"It was rejected (by Apple) a few times. I had a big battle with Apple, going back and forth, so it was a huge relief when it finally passed."

She has since developed several more applications, including iPort, which helps models and other creative types organize their professional portfolios on an iPad.

"I noticed so many models were using iPads to show casting directors their work, but it looked messy and didn't have a nice interface," Scott said. "So I made iPort as similar functionally as an actual portfolio but much more convenient."

Her brother, Matthew, is one of her biggest fans.

"Lyndsey is a mix of Bill Gates and Giselle (Bundchen)," said Matthew Scott. "She combines her passion for modeling and passion of coding to help improve our world."

Last month, Scott visited a middle school in New York City's Harlem neighborhood to speak with students interested in computer programming.

"We have this idea of people in technology being and looking a certain way," she said. "That stereotype is destructive, and I think that's part of the reason why female and minority programmers are so few."

Scott said computer coding has now become a second professional life for her. She has plans for many more apps, and wants to learn coding for Android as well.

The young dual-career woman would never have called herself a nerd while growing up because she saw it as a hurtful word at the time.

"But now that I'm older, if it means being smart and having interests like computer science, then I have no problem being a nerd," she said.

Haunting images of 'ghost homes'

Italian photographer Matteo Rovella spent June in the Syrian city of Aleppo, capturing the impact of the country's brutal civil war on its population. He was particularly struck by the many destroyed and abandoned homes "where time seems to have stopped," he said.

Rovella traveled into Syria via the Turkish border with the Free Syrian Army, the country's main opposition force.

This picture shows the remains of a Free Syrian Army commander's home. "The living room was literally sliced in half," he said.

Rovella said that to him, the images showed scores of lives in the process of being interrupted. "You are obligated to leave your things, your home, your life and go away, maybe to not come back," he said.

Some of his images have an almost unbearable poignancy. "Almost all the families and the people I met lost their house because of bombing," he said.

Rovella described the images as capturing the moment a person or family's life changed forever. "You can see inside them the tensions and fear, (the) moments of violence," he said.

"You see such scenes, and you imagine the moment when people had to escape from the rooms," Rovella said. "I imagine the people who must run away or they will die."

The eerie quality of the photos is striking, with mundane household items strewn amid the rubble of countless battles.

The constant threat of attack or getting caught in crossfire between rebels and government forces meant Rovella had to work quickly. "I was walking through buildings and taking pictures very fast," he said. "But I tried to do it in an artistic way. "

Despite the carnage, Rovella was moved by the resilience of those he encountered. "People are desperate," he said. "They are a mix of tears, sorrow and anger, and they wonder why no one ... is helping them. But they don't give up."

• Italian photographer spent six weeks in Aleppo documenting impact of Syria's conflict


• Matteo Rovella wanted images to convey impact of violence that forced people to escape


• "I was ... taking pictures very fast, but I tried to do it in an artistic way," he said

Send us your images of lost or abandoned buildings from across the world

(CNN) -- Amid the rubble, you see a child's toy, clothing, furniture, family photographs. Homes that once sheltered families now ripped open, their insides spilling out like intestines.

These haunting images were captured in Aleppo in June by Italian photographer Matteo Rovella. While many photographers concentrate on the faces of Syria's brutal conflict, Rovella saw another side: what happens when a person's private space becomes ripped open by war.

"You see such scenes, and you imagine the moment when people had to escape from the rooms," he said. "I imagine the people who must run away -- or die."

Rovella had visited several camps on both sides of the Syria-Turkey border in early 2013. Thanks to a friend in the city keeping him up to date with events, he decided in June to head to the Syrian city of Aleppo, which has been ravaged in fighting between government and rebel fighters.

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After organizing a car ride with a man from the Free Syrian Army, the main opposition rebel force, he crossed the border from Turkey. Many journalists choose to enter with the rebels for better access and less censorship than with the Syrian government, he said.

The trip to Aleppo involved nerve-jangling encounters with armed checkpoints and constant fear of discovery.

Just carrying a camera was dangerous, he said, particularly since the abduction of several foreign journalists in the country. "There are many independent armed gangs, and they could stop you, rob you, kidnap you and in the worst case, kill you."

When he arrived in Aleppo and began to work, photographing and interviewing Free Syrian Army fighters and local residents, he saw much of the city's precious historical monuments damaged or destroyed and neighborhoods smashed to pieces. At one point, while he was interviewing a local rebel commander, a mortar wheeled overhead, slamming into two fighters less than 100 meters from him.

"It was horrible. And strange, as it felt like I was not there, maybe because of the camera creating distance, just working inside my (camera) viewer," he said. "In truth, of course, you are very much there, and you're risking your life."

After a few days, Rovella began documenting the devastation through a series of evocative images of abandoned and destroyed homes that had been attacked over the course of the conflict. Almost all the people he met over the course of his visit had lost part or all of their homes.

"It's something like still-life photography, but you can see inside the homes tensions and fear, the moments of violence, how you were obligated to leave your things, your home, your life and go away, maybe to not come back."

Nearly 700 killed in Syria rebel infighting

It was dangerous work. Many of the buildings are now lookout points for the Free Syrian Army and targeted by government attacks. He often found himself sprinting with rebel fighters from one building to the next.

"I was walking through buildings and taking pictures very fast," he said. "But I tried to do it in an artistic way. "

Now back in Italy, he feels that the images of abandoned buildings show how the calm of everyday home life can suddenly, terribly, be shattered forever.

"It is a way to sensitize people to the war," he said of his images. "I think my testimony could be a little piece more to help the Syrians. A very tiny piece of help."