NASA’s Curiosity rover has captured an image of a gorgeous, delicate formation on Mars that appears to be a chunk of ocean coral. This formation isn’t really coral, but stands out as yet another example of how we see familiar Earth objects in random shapes on Mars.
This image can also be compared to a water droplet exploding when it touches a surface, or an anemone branch in a tide pool.
Kevin Gill, famous for processing NASA space images, calls the formation the “Martian flower” and draws attention to this beautiful shot of Curiosity. The image was captured by Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager instrument, which NASA describes as “a rover’s version of the handheld magnifier that geologists usually carry with them.” So the formation in the image is actually much smaller than it appears.
Curiosity’s team, Abigail Fraeman, posted an image comparing the formation to a US coin to approximate scale. In this image, it can be clearly seen that the formation is much smaller than the coin.
Curiosity has been orbiting Mars’ Gale Crater since 2012. It moves towards the middle mountain of the crater, Mount Sharp, presenting information and images about the geology, history and atmosphere of the Red Planet as it progresses, and occasionally sharing selfies that include himself.
This small mineral formation may bear traces of Mars’ once watery past. It’s also thought to point to an important area of study that could help scientists understand whether the now-uninhabitable planet could once have hosted microbe life.
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