A Bear on Planet Mars? | NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

A Bear on Planet Mars? | NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

Wait . . . what? Is this a peculiar formation or do your eyes deceive you? 

There is 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 might be due to the settling of a deposit over a buried impact crater. Maybe "the nose" is a volcanic or mud vent and the deposit could be lava or mud flows?

"Maybe just grin and bear it!" ;)

Seeing familiar objects or patterns in otherwise random or unrelated objects or patterns is called pareidolia. It is a form of apophenia, which is a more general term for the human tendency to seek patterns in random information. 

Black and white images are less than 5 km across; enhanced color images are  less than1 km.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is a spacecraft designed to study the geology and climate of Mars, to provide reconnaissance of future landing sites, and to relay data from surface missions back to Earth. It was launched on August 12, 2005, and reached Mars on March 10, 2006. 

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The HiRISE camera was built by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corporation and is operated by the University of Arizona.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Narration: Tre Gibbs

Tre's website: www.tregibbs.com

Duration: 52 seconds

Release Date: Jan. 25, 2023

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