In a rather strange finding, some have reported seeing what it appears to be a Buddha statue in recent photographs of Mars’ surface.
Of course, the more likely explanation is that this simply an ordinary rock formation that sort of kind of resembles something designed by intelligent people here on Earth, rather than signs of an ancient Mars civilization — but it still caused some interesting speculation online, according to a Huffington Post report.
A number of UFO websites seized on the photograph as signs of intelligent life, although even some self proclaimed UFOlogists wondered whether this was really a sign that could be taken to the United Nations as proof of intelligent life.
It’s actually not the first time this weird rock formation has been commented on before. NASA’s Curiosity rover took a picture of it last October, and the formation was seen amongst a group of other rocks, prompting stories on UFO websites proclaiming that a statue had been discovered on Mars.
One of them, Paranormal Crucible, even posted a video attempting to draw the statue in detail as it might appear in a clear image. The NASA image is quite blurry, so the site used colorization techniques and little imagination to rebuild it, according to the report. They suggested that perhaps it was from an advanced culture on Mars that created monuments to their gods.
Ever since the Curiosity rover landed on Mars, the photographs it has released have been subject to speculation from conspiracy theorists and UFOlogists. They have pointed to other supposedly alien artifacts in the pictures, which NASA typically dismisses as misidentified rock formations. One site claimed to see a traffic light, another a humanoid figure, and yet another a floating spoon. Some even claimed to see whole cities.
Even the moon has not been immune to this speculation, with some Internet users claiming to see a shadowy, human-like figure on its surface.
Currently, NASA is on a bit of hiatus as Mars moves into an alignment that makes it difficult to communicate with the rovers and other scientific instruments at the Red Planet. Here is an excerpt from a statement from NASA in June:
“This month, Mars will swing almost directly behind the sun from Earth’s perspective, and this celestial geometry will lead to diminished communications with spacecraft at Mars.
“The arrangement of the sun between Earth and Mars is called Mars solar conjunction. It occurs about every 26 months as the two planets travel in their sun-centered orbits. The sun disrupts radio communications between the planets during the conjunction period. To prevent spacecraft at Mars from receiving garbled commands that could be misinterpreted or even harmful, the operators of Mars orbiters and rovers temporarily stop sending any commands.
“The teams running NASA’s three active Mars orbiters and two Mars rovers will refrain from sending commands to their spacecraft from about June 7 to June 21. During that period, the sun will be within two degrees of Mars in Earth’s sky. (Don’t try to look, though, because looking at the sun is dangerous to the eyes.) The operators also will put restrictions on commanding — such as using only reduced data rates or communicating only in an emergency — during the days before and after that period.
“Spacecraft will continue making some science observations during the conjunction period, though rovers will not do any driving or arm movements.
“‘Our overall approach is based on what we did for the solar conjunction two years ago, which worked well,’ said Nagin Cox, a systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, who is leading conjunction planning for NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. ‘It is really helpful to have been through this before.'”