The photo of the “bear” that discovered a NASA spacecraft on Mars

A group of NASA scientists discovered the face of a bear in an unexpected rock formation on the surface of Mars.

The HiRISE high-resolution camera that the University of Arizona operates on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) mission has obtained this image of the red planet that resembles the face of a bear.

In the orbital photograph, taken on December 12, 2022, it actually presents a hill with a V-shaped collapse structure (the nose), two craters (the eyes), and a circular fracture pattern (the head).

The circular fracture pattern could be due to deposit settlement on top of a buried impact crater. Perhaps the nose is a volcanic or mud vent and the deposit could be lava or mud flows? the camera team wondered in a statement.

“Maybe just smile and bear it,” added the University of Arizona.

On December 24, the lander insight from NASA he felt the ground shake unusually. registered a “Marsism” of magnitude 4, that only scientists determined that it was due to the impact of a meteorite and not a telluric movement typical of a rocky planet.

The researchers determined that the quake was due to a meteorite impact when they detected a huge new crater and compared before and after images captured by the probe. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) from NASA orbiting Mars. Offering a rare chance to see a huge impact shake the Martian soil, the event and its effects are detailed in two scientific papers published yesterday in the peer-reviewed journal Science.

The impact of a meteorite is estimated to it is one of the largest seen on Mars since NASA began exploring the cosmos. In addition, the strike knocked out boulder-sized chunks of ice buried closer to the Martian equator than ever before, a discovery with implications for NASA’s future plans to send roving astronauts to the Red Planet.

It is estimated that the meteoroid measured from 5 to 12 meters. This is small enough to have burned up in Earth’s atmosphere, but not in the thin atmosphere of Mars, which is only 1% denser than our planet’s. The impact, in a region called Amazonis Planitia, opened a crater approximately 150 meters wide and 21 meters deep. Part of the ejecta thrown by the impact flew up to 37 kilometers away.

According to the NPR medium, this is not the first time that scientists have found photos of the exterior of the Earth with a strange resemblance to entities on this planet.

In 1997, scientists discovered a large rock on Mars that they named Pooh Bear. And in 1976, NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft detected a plateau that resembled a human face, nearly two miles from end to end, in a region of Mars called Cydonia.

Also in Similar structures have also been found on the Moon thanks to the help of the Chinese rover Yutu 2which revealed what appeared to be a cube-shaped object, dubbed as “mystery cabin”. Ultimately, it ended up being a simple rock in which the reflection of light and perspective also came into action to give the sensation of something elsecommented the AS medium.

(with information from EP)

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