The Mars rover Perseverance has found another fascinating object on Mars. NASA shared a fresh photo of a rock that looks strikingly like… a cut avocado.
Perseverance landed on the Red Planet in February 2021. Since then, he has been tirelessly exploring the Jezero Crater and trying to find evidence of the existence of life in the past. During his journey, he encountered many intriguing rocks. The collection now includes the rock avocado – an elongated, rounded formation with a characteristic bulge resembling a seed. Moreover, the rough surface of the rock even reflects the texture of the fruit’s skin.
Collects samples and examines the environment
The photo was taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument, which consists of a pair of cameras placed high on a mast that resembles the rover’s head. It was performed on the 907th Marian Day.
Billions of years ago, there was a large lake and river delta in the Jezero Crater. With the help of Ingenuity rotorcraft, which supports Perseverance’s work, the area is being surveyed in greater detail. One of the rover’s most important goals is to characterize the Martian environment and collect samples to be returned to Earth on future missions.
Rock in the shape of a cross-sectioned avocadoNASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
Avocado, book, donut
Recent months are full of interesting finds. In June, Perseverance spotted a donut-shaped rock with a hole in the middle that scientists believe may be the remains of a large meteorite that fell on the Red Planet. A month earlier, the rover photographed a rock that looked like an open book.
These types of images are examples of a phenomenon known as pareidolia. This is the tendency of the human brain to impose a familiar pattern on random visual data.
photo-source">Main image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
2023-09-17 19:40:42
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