---
title: "Mars Rover Spots Something That Looks an Awful Lot Like a Door"
description: "NASA's Curiosity rover snapped a picture of a foot-high rock feature on Mars that looks like an alien door or tomb entrance. Cue the conspiracies!"
date: "2022-05-14"
modified: "2022-05-14"
authors:
  - name: "Lonnie Lee Hood"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/ahood"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/mars-rover-spots-door-topography"
categories:
  - "Astronomy"
  - "Mars"
  - "Space"
tags:
  - "mars"
  - "NASA"
  - "rover"
  - "the digest"
---

# Mars Rover Spots Something That Looks an Awful Lot Like a Door

![NASA's Curiosity rover snapped a picture of a foot-high rock feature on Mars that looks like an alien door or tomb entrance. Cue the conspiracies!](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/mars-rover-spots-door-topography.png>)
*\<em\>Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS\</em\>*

## Open Sesame

It looks like a tiny doorway that leads to an underground Martian tomb — but it's probably just old sand.

NASA's Curiosity rover has been studying Mars' surface [features for just more than 10 years](<https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/spacecraft/rover/summary/>) and observed a foot-high topographical feature on Mount Sharp last week. A photo of the area was [published on NASA's public gallery page](<https://mars.nasa.gov/raw_images/1064629/?site=msl>).

Ashwin Vasavada, a project scientist in the Mars Science Laboratory, told [*Gizmodo* in a report published today](<https://gizmodo.com/nasa-mars-curiosity-rover-doorway-1848922393>) that the region was formed by ancient sand dunes that created sandstone outcroppings over time. The "door" is most likely a small fracture.

"I think what we have here \[is\] either two vertical fractures, where the middle piece has been removed, or one vertical fracture, and the blocks have moved apart a little bit," Vasavada told the outlet.

The photo was taken from the rover's mastcam, [which NASA says](<https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/spacecraft/rover/summary/>) gives the rover's images a "human-scale view."

## Sure, Man

Vasavada's expert opinion about the doorway isn't fooling the real truthers out there — UFO enthusiasts. Conspiracies are already spreading online, and they're pretty entertaining. One Twitter user claims there's [a painted skull](<https://twitter.com/SabersKnight/status/1524121695875137536?s=20&t=i-n8Az5td4tbYBFiyuThng>) inside the "doorway" and one "enhanced" image purports to [show a little man inside](<https://twitter.com/Lesixel38/status/1524858815950340108?s=20&t=i-n8Az5td4tbYBFiyuThng>). Of course, those narratives conveniently leave out the ole' "[Moon cube](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/moon-cube-photo>)" and [space slug](<https://www.cnet.com/science/space/space-slug-mars-looks-like-an-alien-creature-in-wild-nasa-image/>) that both turned out to be nothing.

While we'd love to learn [the Shire's Hobbits](<http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Hobbits>) were really just JRR Tolkien predicting the future and that there are little men on Mars, that's probably not the case. But hey, [according to SpaceX](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-team-humanity-mars-decade-space>), we'll get to check for ourselves sometime within the next decade.

**More on off-world news:** [*Boeing's Attempt to Compete With SpaceX Is Even More Cursed Than We Thought*](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/boeing-starliner-cursed>)