Bear-y Cool Capture on the Red Planet
One NASA orbiter turned its camera to the Martian planet, to find a bear-y friendly face staring back.
A camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter called the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) captured this bear-y unusual feature last month. The image was shared by the University of Arizona on January 25.
A camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, called the High Resolution Imaging Experiment, or HiRISE, captured an image of the unusual geological feature in December. The circle, two eyes, nose, and mouth all resemble that of Paddington or Smokey, but what is it actually?
The nose is actually a hill with a V-shaped collapse structure, the two eyes are craters, and the head is a circular fracture pattern according to the team. The HiRISE team says, "The circular fracture pattern might be due to the settling of a deposit over a buried impact crater. The nose might be formed by a volcanic or mud vent, so the material deposited over the crater could be lava or mud."
While the adorable face looks well put together here, it still may be bigger than you avctually think. One scaled image shows the features spread out almost 2,000 kilometers across the Martian surface.
The HiRISE camera has been capturing images since Mars 2006, when the Mars Reconnaissance orbiter began orbiting the planet. The camera was designed to capture detailed images of the surface, including images as small as 3 feet. The orbiter circles the planet around every 112 minutes. The team is always finding familiar faces on the planet, just like this one. Maybe just 'grin and bear it.'
