Bear-Shaped Rock Formation Found on Mars by NASA and University of Arizona
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The University of Arizona (UA) shared a NASA photo of a location on Mars on January 25, 2023. The geological image is quite unique as it appears to form a recognizable figure, that of a cute teddy bear. The image appears as a bear smiling towards the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) camera in space. Although the actual formation is various rocks, it is clearly shaped like two beady eyes, a button nose, and a mouth facing upwards. The photo was actually taken on December 12, 2022, as the MRO flew about 251 kilometers above the Red Planet.
If studied closely and carefully, the formation may just be a hill with a V-shaped collapse structure (nose), two craters (eyes), and a circular fracture pattern (head), according to a statement uploaded on UA's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) blog. The circular fracture pattern may be caused by the deposit settling on top of a buried impact crater.
Those who see the photo may perceive a bear face emerging from the rock formations and dusty cracks due to a phenomenon called pareidolia, a psychological tendency that leads people to find significance in random images or sounds.
Space provides endless objects for pareidolia, such as a nebula flowing gas and dust randomly. To pareidoliacs, this can appear as the city-destroying monster Godzilla or the Mars rock formation that NASA once thought to be the Muppet Beaker.
The newly discovered Mars teddy bear and Beaker were captured by HiRISE, one of the six science instruments onboard the MRO. HiRISE has been photographing the Red Planet from orbit since 2006 and is the most powerful camera ever sent to another planet, according to UA.
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