Nasa mission
Camera snaps ‘bear’ face on Mars
The Hirise camera took this picture of the surface of Mars. Clearly a bear
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona
Mars has been eagerly explored for years. In the process, entertaining things are also brought to light. A recent recording is quite reminiscent of a bear.
A Nasa mission to explore Mars took a hilarious photo of the planet’s surface and has now published it. The structure seen on it is reminiscent of a bear’s face.
The image was captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s Hirise camera. The space probe has been exploring Earth’s neighboring planet since March 2006. Part of the probe is the camera that took the “bears” photo at an altitude of about 250 kilometers above the planet’s surface, according to reports on the recording.
What exactly can be seen on Mars remains open
According to the “Hirise” team, the photo was taken on December 12, 2022. The V-shaped “nose” may be a mound with a collapse structure, writes scientist Alfred McEwen on the “Hirise” website. It could be a crater from which lava or mud once flowed. Two nearby craters form the “eyes” and frame the whole is a circular fracture pattern – the “face”.
But he doesn’t actually know what we’re seeing and advises the viewer to just smile at the picture.
It’s not the first time the Hirise team has posted a hilarious photo from Mars exploration. About two years ago, the researchers reported on a “smiley” on the planet.
That we humans see a “bear” here is due to a phenomenon called pareidolia. In this type of hallucination, we complete unfamiliar patterns in a way that makes us think we recognize familiar things. A typical case are clouds that look like objects.
Sources: University of Arizona/Hirise, NDTV“Frankfurter Rundschau“, “thatch“
Lread an article from our archive about a Nasa mission to the moon at stern+