NASA’s new picture of two boulders resembling a shark fin and a crab claw on Mars is the latest example of pareidolia, a phenomenon where the brain creates meaning out of what the eyes see. The Perseverance rover captured these images last month, sparking excitement and humor among space fans. Some joked that the crab-like rock was the remains of the ‘Almighty Great Cosmic Crab’, while others suggested the claw looked more like a coffee bean or the head of a turtle. There were even quips about the shark fin being the back plates of a Stegosaurus.
This is not the first time pareidolia has occurred with images from Mars. In 1976, NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft captured an image that appeared to show a face carved into the surface of the Red Planet. Although NASA clarified that it was an illusion caused by shadows, some people believed it to be the work of extraterrestrial beings. It wasn’t until 1998, when the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) captured sharper images of the so-called ‘Face on Mars’, that it was revealed to be a natural-looking rocky outcrop.
NASA has been sharing various strange rock formations spotted on Mars. Earlier this year, they shared pictures of a donut-shaped rock and a bone-like stone. Perseverance’s fellow Mars rover, Curiosity, also captured an image of a shadowy feature in a rock face that some claimed was a ‘doorway’. However, NASA dismissed this idea, explaining that it was caused by straight-line fractures in the rock face.
The Perseverance rover’s mission is to search for signs of ancient life on Mars. It is currently exploring an ancient river delta within the Jezero Crater, which used to be a deep lake. Scientists believe that microbial life may have existed there billions of years ago, and the rover will examine soil samples to hunt for evidence of this. The Mars 2020 mission, including the Perseverance rover, was launched to help scientists understand how life evolved in the earliest years of the solar system.
The Mars 2020 spaceship, which carried the rover and a helicopter named Ingenuity, launched on July 30 and successfully landed on Mars on February 18, 2021. Perseverance will collect samples inside the crater, and a future mission in partnership with the European Space Agency will return those samples to Earth for further analysis.