'Tadpole' Rock on Mars | NASA Mars Curiosity Rover

'Tadpole' Rock on Mars | NASA Mars Curiosity Rover

"Been following Mars missions since the Viking days, and I've seen a lot of weird rocks in that time, out on the plains, inside craters, on mountain tops, but this one, imaged by [the Mars Curiosity rover] is just . . . nuts. Beautiful, but nuts . . . " 

—Gill Stuart Atkinson - Citizen Scientist (Twitter)

Pareidolia. Dictionaries describe this term as a human tendency to see recognizable shapes in objects or data that are otherwise not familiar to us.

Learn about NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover:

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/home/

Learn more about pareidolia and Martian "space oddities:"

https://mars.nasa.gov/multimedia/space-oddities/

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Kevin M.

Image Date: Curiosity MSL - Sol 3385 - MastCam 

Release Date: February 15, 2022

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