$2.5 billion miracle-of-technology distracted by small, shiny object

I almost put this story in my “but we have to raise taxes to pay schoolteachers” series, but since I’m a big fan of the space program, I didn’t. Because this is my favored spending, see.

Still. Funny:

The Curiosity rover is stopping its sampling of soil from the surface of Mars because of a shiny object noticed on the ground.

A photo released by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of Curiosity’s first scoop of Martian soil also revealed a bright object nearby.

…When word of the mysterious item on the surface spread, Twitter commenters, of course, chimed in with their guesses: a lost earring, a cigarette butt, a screw that came loose, Martian macaroni or some unusual chunks of sand.

The conventional wisdom is: it’s some little piece of the rover itself that fell off. My best guess: it’s the key to the padlock on my old shed from years ago that my now-grown Marine recruit lost when he was 5.