This pending move back to planetary science from earth sub-orbit comes on the heels of improvements in pointing systems and instrument technologies that will allow ground-based controllers to fine-tune balloon payloads to include one-meter class optical and infrared telescopes.

FORBES: Budgets Nudge NASA Toward Balloon-Based Planetary Science: First Target? Comet ISON

For decades, sub-Saharan Africa has been treated as nothing more than a dumping ground for humanitarian aid an instrument the West occasionally employed to ease its collective guilt for slavery, colonialism and its own prosperity, only to turn its attention elsewhere as soon as that guilt was temporarily assuaged.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Recolonizing Africa

For decades, sub-Saharan Africa has been treated as nothing more than a dumping ground for humanitarian aid -- an instrument the West occasionally employed to ease its collective guilt for slavery, colonialism and its own prosperity, only to turn its attention elsewhere as soon as that guilt was temporarily assuaged.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Recolonizing Africa

Using filters on the rover's Mast camera (Mastcam) and an instrument which shoots neutrons into the ground to probe for hydrogen, researchers have detected more hydrated minerals near the clay-bearing rock than at locations Curiosity visited earlier in its mission.

BBC: Curiosity breaks rock to reveal dazzling white interior