NASA’s Perseverance rover took another curious photo of the surface of Mars: a very sloping and rocky landscape, which includes a rock balanced on another and a rock that resembles the head of a serpent with its mouth open.
The image was captured on Sunday (12), when the rover – which works as a laboratory on wheels – was exploring the Kodiak region, remnant of the delta of an ancient river in the Jezero crater.
If life ever existed on the red planet, even if it was just microbial activity billions of years ago, this is the place most likely to hold evidence.
Below it is possible to observe the image of the ‘balancer stone’.
Rock seems balanced on a larger one
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
Here you can see the head of a snake.
Lump looks like a snake’s head sticking out of the rock
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
The landscape recorded by the NASA robot caused speculation and generated memes.
How is that little round rock standing there? Shouldn’t she have rolled over and fallen?
It even looks like a scene from an Indiana Jones movie (who hates snakes), maybe a desert planet from Star Wars, or maybe a cartoon.
“This is perhaps the most evocative photo ever taken on Mars. I can’t stop looking and marveling at this landscape,” astrobiologist David Grinspoon said on Twitter.
“Really an amazing image, but it’s also totally evocative of something else for people of a certain age and class…”, commented one internet user referring to Gorn, a humanoid reptile from the “Star Trek” franchise.
Scientist Jessie Christiansen recalled one of the scenes from the movie “The Lion King”, where Rafiki introduces baby Simba.
In addition to this joke, she also shared a montage of the same image with Coyote, from the drawing of the Road Runner (meep-meep!), featured.
*With information from the Space website
