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A Bear on Mars?
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
CUTE CRATER: Collapsed terrain on Mars resulted in a formation that looks like a bear’s face.
This past December, NASA used a powerful camera named HiRISE to capture an image of an unusual landform on the surface of Mars: It’s shaped just like the face of an adorable teddy bear!
HiRISE is one of the instruments aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter—a spacecraft sent to study the Red Planet. The camera was designed to take extremely detailed pictures of the Martian landscape.
Scientists think the bear-like shape may be the accumulation of dust and rocks settled over a buried crater. Its hills and valleys form the bear’s facial features. But NASA can’t know for sure until researchers examine the formation for themselves one day. Until then, we’ll “just grin and bear it,” jokes HiRISE scientist Alfred McEwen.