NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
NASA’s Perseverance Rover captured this image of a strange rock on August 5, 2025.
NASA’s Rover Perseverance stumbled into a curious volcano -shaped rock… or medieval helmet on the surface of Mars. In the end, it’s just another addition to the vast collection of strange rocks found on the red planet.
Captured by NASA’s Mastcam-Z instrument-z’s instrument, on August 5, 2025, the rock displays a pointed peak and a chopped nodular texture with appearance of a volcano also evokes the image of armor forged for centuries.
On Earth, similar nodular textures can form through chemical meteorization, mineral precipitation or even volcanic processes. Perseverance found one.
NASA scientists have made the image of the “helmet” now found; And, in statements to the same magazine, they were intrigued by the spherules that compose it.
“The target name of this rock is Horneflya and is distinct less by the form of helmet (which seems to be generally consistent with the pyramidal shape that we often see in wind -eroded blocks on the surface of Mars) and more because It is made almost entirely of spherules“, These David aglea spokesman for the Perseverance team in the NASA jet propulsion lab.
Scientists theorize that in some rocks seen in Mars, these spherules They are formed when groundwater passed through pores in sedimentary rocks.
The Mastcam-Z instrument, a pair of zoom-like cameras in the perseverance-like mast, has allowed scientists to capture high-resolution stereoscopic images and detect unusual characteristics like this distance-covered “helmet” rock.
Perseverance discovered a growing gallery of strange rocky shapes, from meteorites similar to donuts even stones similar to avocados.
These types of images are examples of a phenomenon known as, which is the tendency of the human brain to impose a family pattern on other random visual data – whether in clouds, rocks, or Mars.
