The Perseverance Mars rover has discovered yet another intriguing feature on Earth’s neighbour while exploring a lifeless red planet.
The rover recorded a rock in the shape of a snake’s head in the most recent image acquired by Perseverance’s MastCam on June 12. This new picture was taken on Perseverance’s 466th day on Mars after its arrival in February, according to the mission team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
The image shows a stratified butte that may have formerly been a portion of an old river delta in the 45-kilometer-wide (28-mile) Jezero Crater.
It should be noted that this is not the first time that the NASA rover team has revealed images from Mars that cause Pareidolia in the viewers.
The phenomenon called pareidolia allows us to recognise patterns in information or objects that would otherwise be unfamiliar to us. Curiosity, NASA’s second operational rover, captured a photograph of what seems to be a strange entryway in a huge rock wall earlier in May.
Read more: Watch: Mars Base Is A Terrible Idea; Here Are The Reasons Why
However, that did not stop the internet from going wild over this “snake head” rock. Astronomer Dr. Jessie Christiansen, a Project Scientist at NASA Exoplanet Archive, also shared the photograph. She also included a picture of a little pebble perched atop a large rock in her tweet, as though it had been placed there by someone.
Her excitement knew no bounds! In her second tweet, she says “I don’t even know what to look at first. WHAT’s the deal with that balancing rock. Those rock shelves are SUPER cool.” On a funnier note, she made Rafiki from “The Lion King” carry baby Simba in the air in the meme she created from the fascinating image.
However, Perseverance still has a few years to gather rock and soil samples before NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) plan a mission to recover the Martian materials. The expedition will probably start in 2028, and the samples won’t arrive before the early to mid-2030s.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: Republic World, WION, Space.com
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This post is tagged under: mars exploration, mars, space, mars rover, astronomy, solar system. technology, science, NASA
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