What was the mystery blotch that appears on Mars rover photo – but disappears two hours later?
Conspiracy theorists have worked themselves up into a lather over a mysterious blotch visible in the first black and white photographs taken from NASA’s new Curiosity rover as it landed on Mars.
The faint but distinctive dot which can be seen on the horizon of the Red Planet was taken by a device on the $2.5 billion robot called its Hazcam and relayed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter back to Earth.
However, two hours later when the satellite made another pass over Curiosity, the rover sent another batch of images that revealed that the blotch had eerily disappeared.
One of the first images taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover: Visible in the centre of the picture on the horizon is an unexplained shape
The Internet was instantly awash with theories as to why the two photographs would be different, especially as the rover, which is the largest spacecraft ever sent to another planet, landed on its own with no direct control from NASA mission control.
Furthermore, the rover was acting autonomously, meaning that scientists did not command the robot to photograph the exact views containing the blotch.
More…
- The mountains of Mars: NASA Rover makes incredible discovery as spacecraft beams back images 352million miles from the Red Planet – and it looks just like Earth!
- Curiosity sees an added dimension: First 3D images from the Martian surface beamed back to earth
- Touchdown! Wild celebrations as one-ton rover lands on Mars after ‘seven minutes of terror’ descent… and it has already beamed back first picture in HD
The most prominent reason discussed online for the mysterious blot is that Curiosity managed to photograph over the course of 200 milliseconds the crash-landing of the spacecraft that carried the rover to the Martian surface.
However, one engineer working on the project told the LA Times that ‘would be an insane coincidence’ and that the shape on the horizon was most likely dirt on the lens.
About two hours after landing on Mars and beaming back its first image, NASA’s Curiosity rover transmitted a higher-resolution image of its new Martian home without the mysterious shape on the horizon
Regardless, scientists have acknowledged the fact that the blotch is there ‘And then it’s not’ said Sarah Milkovich of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge to the LA Times.
Yesterday morning, JPL engineers surveyed the debris from Curiosity’s landing in a photograph entitled the ‘crime scene’ photograph.
To the southwest of the rover was the parachute that had slowed the rover’s descent and to the southeast was the heat shield that Curiosity jettisoned before it began its controlled jet propelled descent.
To the northwest was the craft that had aided that landing known as the ‘sky crane’ which lowered Curiosity to the ground from 66-feet above the Martian surface, before shooting away to crash land.
This graphic shows the locations of the cameras on NASAs Curiosity rover. NASAs Mars rover Curiosity, loaded with the most-sophisticated instruments ever used to explore another world, touched down on the Red Planet early Monday morning
The satellite photograph showed tht the ‘Sky crane’ craft had landed 2,000-feet away from the rover in the direction the camera would have been pointing when it crashed.
This evidence has led NASA scientists to consider the original unlikely theory.
‘I don’t think that you can rule it out,’ said Curiosity mission manager Michael Watkins.
‘It bears looking into.’
The famous ‘face’ on Mars which conspiracy theorists claimed was evidence for extraterrestrial life on the Red Planet
However more advanced imaging from orbiting satellites revealed that the face was in fact just a large rock formation on the planet’s surface
This new unknown image on Mars bears similarities to the infamous ‘face’ that was taken by Viking 1 on July 25, 1976, that had the appearance of a humanoid face.
Sparking conspiracy theorists into believing that the face was the work of an extraterrestrial intelligence, the image was later debunked by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Global Surveyor as simply an example of pareidolia.
