NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Spots "Ear" of the Red Planet

HiRise crew called out the phenomena of pareidolia, which is responsible for humans imaginatively seeing things like faces in Martian rock formations.

By Bhavya Sukheja | Updated: 9 August 2022 21:40 IST

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Spots

This scene is located in Chryse Planitia in the Northern Hemisphere of Mars.

While NASA might not have been successful in finding signs of life on the Red planet yet, it has revealed an intriguing image captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spaceship. The onboard High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRise) camera spotted a funky crater shaped like an ear.

As per a press release, the HiRise crew called out the phenomena of pareidolia - which is responsible for humans imaginatively seeing things like faces in Martian rock formations.

"Is it pareidolia, where we see features like faces and patterns where they do not really exist, if the shape really does resemble something? In this case, we're looking at an odd-shaped impact crater that looks a great deal like an ear," the team wrote in a picture-of-the-day feature for Friday.

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"And once you see it, it's almost impossible to un-see. The crater is just over 1,800 meters across. This scene is located in Chryse Planitia in the Northern Hemisphere of Mars," the team added.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been orbiting and studying the Red planet since 2006. It is designed to study the geology and climate of Mars, provide reconnaissance of future landing sites, and relay data from surface missions back to Earth.

Meanwhile, this comes after NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover discovered a strange piece of an object, which looked like a tangle of string or shredded material that is clinging together. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the image was captured by the rover's front-facing hazard avoidance cameras that keep an eye on the landscape to protect the Perseverance when it is driving or using its robotic arm.

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Scientists are still unable to determine the exact nature of the object. But according to CNET, the most likely explanation for the tangle of material is debris from previous missions.

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