NASA spies Martian rocks that look just like a 'teddy bear'
2 Min Read
The teddy bear on Mars is explained by a broken hill, an ancient crater, and the human tendency to find faces everywhere. What do you see?
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This cracked hillside on Mars looks like the face of a teddy bear as seen by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter above the Red Planet. (NASA)
Scientists studying Mars' surface recently discovered a piece of the rocky planet smiling back at them or maybe growling.
In a Jan. 25 image shared by The University of Arizona (UA), what appears to be the face of an enormous Martian teddy bear grins at NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's camera, complete with two beady eyes, a button nose, and an upturned mouth.
However, the picture does also look like a growling bear or wolf, according to some.
This image of an odd assortment of geological formations was taken on December 12, 2022, while the MRO was cruising roughly 156 miles (251 kilometers) above Mars.
What's going on here?
It's likely just a broken-up hill in the center of an ancient crater, according to a statement posted to UA's High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera blog.
"There's a hill with a V-shaped collapse structure (the nose), two craters (the eyes), and a circular fracture pattern (the head)," the statement reads. "The circular fracture pattern might be due to the settling of a deposit over a buried impact crater."
Viewers may see a bear's face emerge from a jumble of dusty rocks and crevices due to a psychological phenomenon known as pareidolia, which causes people to find significance in random images or sounds.
Read next: NASA discovers second Earth-sized planet in 'habitable zone'
