joining us with philadelphia, is al jazeera contributor derrick pitts. derrick great to see you as always. comets have fascinated people since people have been around and now we can actually reach out and soon actually touch one of these. the pictures are amazing. they show all kinds of surface features including boulders that are supposedly the size of house he 500 foot cliffs and all sorts of craters. how are scientists reacting to what we're seeing? >> scientists are very excited about what's coming up with the visit of rosetta at this comet. the images they are seeing so far are so incredibly enticing. the resolution is great, they are really very excited about digging so the science of what's happening at this comet. >> how big is this comet compared to others? i know it's two miles by two and a half miles and here we are showing how it compares to the island of manhattan. it's about as wide as manhattan but not nearly as long. >> it's not unusual in a size for a comet. comets can range in size and this is right in there for a standard size comet. wh

derrick pitts, great to see you as always. comets have fascinated people since people have been around and now we can actually reach out and soon actually touch one of these. the pictures are amazing. they see all kinds of as far as features including boulders the size of houses, 500 foot cliffs and all kinds of craters. how are scientists reacting to what we're seeing? >> scientists are very excited about what's come up with the visit of rosetta at this comet. the images are so incredibly enticing. the resolution is very great. they are very excited about digging into the science of what's happening at this comet. >> how big is this comet compared to others? i know it's two miles by two and a half miles. it's about as wide as manhattan but not nearly as long. >> it's not unusual in a size for a comet. you know comets can range in size and this is right in there for a standard-sized comet. what is really unusual about this one is the nucleus has the unusual shape to it. it has two lobes connected by a much narrower neck. scien

those pictures when they start coming occupy derrick pitts, great to you have you. that's all for now, the conversation continues on aljazeera.com or our facebook or google plus, you can see us on twitter @ajconsiderthis. we'll see you next time. >> she's known as baby veronica, and she was at the center of a high-profile custody battle. her adoptive parents are white; her father is native american and has been fighting for her alongside his tribe. the case was tried in the united states supreme court. at the heart of the case is the indian child welfare act, or icwa, which mandates that every effort be made to keep native children with their relatives or tribe. congress passed icwa in 1978 in response to an alarmingly high number of native children being removed from their homes and placed with non-native families - the tie to their cultures and communities severed in the process. 35 years later, the fundamental protections of the law are still being fought for. >> the requirements of that act apply from the minute indian parents and indian kids walk into the court

we're joined by derrick pitts. an al jazeera america contributor. derrick, glad to see you. this opportunity rover has continued to operate far beyond expectations. it's really the energizer bunny of space exploration. >> it really is a remarkable machine. the original mission length for that rover and its sister rover, there were two of them opportunity and spirit launched in 2004. they were originally expected to only really run about three months, maybe six months, if everything worked out well. they've been going for ten years. and it's only about a year and a half ago that spirit finally stopped operating. but the opportunity rover is still going. not as well as it could, earlier, but it's still doing good science. >> and what can we expect to get from it? what kind of good science can we get in the future? >> well, the things that those two rovers were meant to do at the outset of their mission was to be able to identify once and for all that water really had been present on mars in some quantity in the distant past. boasboth of those rovers in different locations on t