The Curiosity rover, which has been orbiting Gale Crater since August 2012 as part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, snapped a photo of a strange Martian object that one expert described as “the strangest structure I’ve ever seen.” Images taken by the car-sized robot show structures protruding like nails from a rock lying at the base of the 154km-long Gale Crater. The photos were taken on Mars’ Sol 3786 or April 1 using Curiosity’s direct camera and ChemCam, sparking a lot of speculation on the internet.
Some likened the structure to a fishbone or a branch of a fir tree, saying it would be “difficult to occur as a natural rock formation” on Earth.
Gale Crater is thought to be a dried-up lake with an age of between 3.5 and 3.8 billion years.
The objectives of the rover’s mission include studying the Martian climate and geology and preparing for human exploration. In the process, he’s constantly sending back images of strange things he’s encountered, like this prickly rock formation.
Astrobiologist Nathalie A. Cabrol shared the photo on Twitter, commenting, “In my 20 years of Mars exploration, it’s the weirdest rock I’ve ever seen.”
Some users on the internet stated that they could not believe this structure, while others stated that the winds blowing through the ages could create all kinds of strange shapes. In addition, many users drew attention to the similarity of this strange structure to different objects, from fish bones to tree branches and even to the “Martian dragon fossil”.
However, this structure is not the first strange structure we have seen on Mars and photographed by Curiosity. Mars exploration vehicles had sent photos of structures of various sizes, which drew attention to their similarities to very different objects in the past, to Earth.
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