Another NASA rover makes a strange discovery on Mars. This time it’s “Curiosity” that finds something that doesn’t seem to belong there.
Pasadena – For many years, Mars has been scrutinized by a fleet of robotic explorers. Several space probes orbit the red planet and examine it from the air, and there are currently two Mars rovers from the US space agency Nasa, which are active on the planet’s surface. True to the saying “who seeks shall find”, the two Nasa rovers in particular keep discovering strange things on Mars.
These are often things that should not even exist on the red planet – the rover “Perseverance” has already photographed an alleged “frog” on Mars, its robotic colleague “Curiosity” has discovered a “gate” on Mars – which turned out to be something else. A flower or coral and a “floating spoon” have also been sighted on Mars.
Mars rover makes strange discovery on Mars
Now “Curiosity” is attracting attention with its latest find: The rover, which has been rolling over Mars since the summer of 2012 and is examining the rocks closely, has discovered something that shouldn’t even exist on Mars: a book . Of course, the current find is not a book with printed pages made of paper, but a stone in the shape of an open book – just like the frog, for example, was also a correspondingly shaped piece of rock.
“My team thinks this uniquely shaped stone is reminiscent of an open book with the pages being moved by the wind,” the Curiosity team wrote on Twitter on behalf of the rover. However, the book is only about 2.5 centimeters wide and therefore a “tiny book”, as the tweet goes on to say.
A “book” on Mars – and many other unusual finds
The image of the book-shaped stone was captured by Curiosity on April 15, 2023, using the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) instrument located at the end of the rover’s robotic arm. “Oddly shaped rocks are not uncommon on Mars. They are often formed when water seeped through cracks in a rock in the past, bringing harder minerals with it.” on your website. “After ages of wind sandblasting the rock, the softer rock has worn away and the harder materials are all that’s left.”
The phenomenon that things are found on Mars with great regularity that do not seem to belong there has a technical term: pareidolia. The term stands for a perceptual effect in which familiar things are recognized in unfamiliar formations – for example figures in the clouds in the sky or a face on the full moon. Especially with pictures of Mars, it often happens that something is interpreted into a picture that cannot exist on Mars. (tab)