Mars Bear
Tired: Cocaine Bear. Wired: Mars Bear.
NASA’s University of Arizona-based High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) gave the internet an absolute treat yesterday, in the shape of an unusually mammalian feature spotted on the surface of the Red Planet by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
“This feature looks a bit like a bear’s face,” reads a tongue-in-cheek HiRISE blog post. “What is it really?”
And in case you had any trouble visualizing the bear’s features, the researchers broke things down further — and in excruciating detail.
“There’s a hill with a V-shaped collapse structure (the nose), two craters (the eyes), and a circular fracture pattern (the head),” they added. There’s even a cringeworthy but endearing, narrated video to really drive their message home.
Missing Facts
Despite the fact that we’re pretty sure it’s not a real bear, as evidenced in a helpful netizen graphic, the researchers still aren’t entirely sure what the features actually are.
“The circular fracture pattern might be due to the settling of a deposit over a buried impact crater,” the HiRISE team posited. “Maybe the nose is a volcanic or mud vent and the deposit could be lava or mud flows?”
All plausible! Still, nothing concrete.
Online Controversy
As expected, social media users weighed in on the NASA discovery.
“He looks like Yogi Bear from the cartoon,” wrote one Twitter user. “A fantastic image.”
“Bear…for sure,” added another.
Elsewhere, American weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin was quick to make Mars Bear all about itself.
“A bear-y nice image, indeed!” the NASA contractor tweeted . “Captured by HiRISE on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, built and currently being flown by our Lockheed Martin space engineers.”
Learn how to share the spotlight, y’all. This is Mars Bears’ moment.
READ MORE: A Bear on Mars? [HiRISE]
More on NASA imagery: James Webb Captures Its First Look at Saturn’s Most Mysterious Moon