NASA, Rolling Stones, Robert Downey Jr. the secret is unveiled: they named a rock

In a few days, an astronaut tour guide can venture onto the dusty surface of the red planet and point to a small rock just behind NASA's silence. Insight lander and ad, "And that, my friends, that's Rolling Rock Stones."

Let it sink in. There is now a rock on Mars known as "Rolling Stones Rock".

The Stones went on stage in Pasedena, California on Thursday night for the band's No Filter tour. The Rose Bowl is near NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

In a way, Robert Downey Jr. is entangled in all of this. The Iron Man actor made the announcement of Mars rock before the band played.

It all started with a mysterious Downey teaser video earlier on Thursday. "It 's perhaps the most exciting thing I' ve ever done," said Downey, which could well be an overestimate of the year.

This is not any old rock from Mars. The NASA InSight lander landed on the planet in November 2018. The machine's thrusters disrupted the rock the size of a golf ball, sending it rolling on a meter.

"It is the farthest NASA that has seen a rock roll while it lands on another planet," the space agency said in a statement released on Thursday. An image of the rock shows the path left on the dusty ground.

"I have seen a lot of Martian rocks during my career," said Matt Golombek, a geologist at NASA. "This one will probably not appear in many scientific articles, but it's certainly one of the coolest."

Downey agrees. "Sometimes the world does some really cool stuff," he tweeted after the revelation.

NASA shared a hype video showing an InSight landing animation on Mars on the theme of Stones 'Only Rock' s. N 'Roll (but I like it).

The name Rolling Stones Rock is informal, but NASA says it will appear on work cards on the planet.

Maybe it will inspire Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to rework some of their classic songs, like If You Can not Mars Rock Me, Street Fighting Martian or Paint It Red (Planet).