Marquette Island

[Skatastrophy]

In non-Earth related news... NASA's Mar's rover, Opportunity, has uncovered '"one of the coolest things Opportunity has found in a very long time:" a dark, basketball-sized rock known as "Marquette Island."'

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/56278

There is no explanation given for the naming of the rock which leads me to believe that it was named after our university    (or maybe after named after the real Marquette Island which is part of the Les Cheneaux archipelago of Northern Michigan... one may never know)

According to NASA the Marquette Island rock is a coarse-grained rock that indicates it cooled slowly from molten rock, allowing crystals time to grow. Such  composition suggests it originated deep in the crust, not at the surface where it would cool quicker and have finer-grained texture, NASA stated.

[Hards Alumni]

Maybe since Father Marquette was an explorer.

just sayin.

[Sir Lawrence]

The dark-toned rock stood out so prominently in more distant views on earlier sols that the rover team referred to it as 'Sore Thumb' before assigning the Marquette name in accord with an informal naming convention of choosing island names for the isolated rocks that the rover is finding as it crosses a relatively barren plain on its long trek from Victoria Crater toward Endeavour Crater.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1539.html