If all goes as planned, NASA's next Mars rover will touch down on the Red Planet in August near the foot of a towering mountain of tremendous geologic interest. Unnamed until now, the three-mile-high layered mountain has been dubbed "Mount Sharp" by the international science team of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. The name is a fitting honor for the late Caltech geologist Robert P. Sharp (BS '34, MS '35), who himself had a towering reputation and made lasting contributions to our understanding of the processes that alter the surfaces of planets.

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