Nasa rover spots bizarre donut shaped rock on Mars
Current and past Mars rovers have made similar discoveries of strange-looking rocks on Red Planet
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Your support makes all the difference.Nasa’s Perseverance rover has spotted a strange donut-shaped rock on Mars, which is likely a meteorite that crashed onto the Red Planet.
The bizarre big, dark stone, which has a hole in its center, was found surrounded by stones of similar hue by the rover’s remote-sensing camera.
“Nasa Perseverance took a picture using the SuperCam Remote Micro-Imager on 23 June 2023 of a donut-shaped rock off in the distance, which could be a large meteorite alongside smaller pieces,” the California-based SETI institute tweeted on Monday.
Such strange-looking rocks and formations have also been previously found on Mars by current and past rovers.
Earlier this year, astronomers discovered a strange structure on Mars resembling a bear’s face.
The rock formation consisted of two craters that appeared to make up the eyes of the ”bear,” and a V-shaped collapsed hill for its snout.
Researchers said following the finding in January that the circular fracture pattern was likely due to the settling of a deposit over a buried impact crater while the bear nose-like structure is likely a volcanic or mud vent.
Then in February, Nasa revealed the Curiosity rover’s finding of a strange shiny metallic rock on the Red Planet that appeared to be an iron-nickel meteorite.
The rock dubbed “Cacao” was found in a region near Mars’ Mount Sharp that likely had a “big crater” in the ancient past.
Prior to these findings, Curiosity also spotted a strange rock formation that looked like an “alien doorway” which likely formed on Mars due to seismic activities.
And a geological formation spotted last year also tricked the eyes of several people online, appearing like a “tranquil person” hanging out on Mars.
Curiosity had also previously found the “Egg Rock” in 2016, and stumbled upon a 7-foot-long meteorite in 2014, which the rover’s team named “Lebanon.”
The Opportunity rover, which was active on Mars from 2004 until 2018, had also made its share of discoveries of unique rocks on the Red Planet, discovering the famous Heat Shield Rock – a meteorite that was the first to ever be found on another planet.
The online interest sparked by some of these strange rock discoveries seems to be in part due to the psychological phenomenon of “pareidolia”, in which humans tend to find meaning in things that are just randomly arranged.
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