NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped a strange formation that resembles animation star Woody Woodpecker. Cue up Woody's iconic laugh.
Mars would be a pretty boring place for a birder. There are no birds—or any other lifeforms we’re currently aware of—on the red planet. The next best thing for the birdwatcher and space-fan crossover crowd is a fantastical Martian landscape formation that looks like a woodpecker when seen from orbit. It’s the latest example of Mars pareidolia—the human tendency to see familiar shapes in random objects.
The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera is part of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a spacecraft that’s been cruising above the red planet since 2006. The camera captured the bird look-alike in May. “This image reveals some bright materials on a crater floor, part of which forms an outline similar to a woodpecker,” HiRise principal investigator Alfred McEwen wrote in aon July 11.
Mars has a way of reminding us of home through the power of pareidolia. It’s the same phenomenon that lets us see sheep or dragons in the fluffy shapes of clouds here on Earth. Martian rocks can look like an. MRO peered down on Mars in late 2022 and spotted a surface structure that resembled a bear’s face, complete with craters for eyes and a fracture pattern forming the round head.
The HiRise team—based out of the University of Arizona—regularly shares eye-catching images like the woodpecker and the bear. The fanciful menagerie is part of the camera team’s public outreach efforts.One of the most famous examples of Mars pareidolia is the Face on Mars image taken by NASA’s Viking 1 spacecraft, one of NASA’s early emissaries to the red planet. A low-resolution image from the mission showed a mound that resembled a human face.
The woodpecker formation in the crater should conjure up audio memories of Woody’s persistent laugh. It makes Mars—a planet 140 million miles away from Earth—feel a little closer to home.
Mars NASA MRO Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Hirise Woodpecker
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