NASA Finds “Mysterious” Rock In Front Of Mars’ Opportunity Rover

NASA scientists from the Mars Exploration Rover project have discovered a strange discrepancy in two photos taken by the Opportunity rover. The first picture displays a photo taken 3528 SOL days (or Martian days) after the Opportunity arrived on Mars. The second photo shows the exact landscape, only with a strange object, presumably a rock, added to the background just after 12 SOL days.

The first reaction of NASA’s scientists looked like: “‘wait a second, that wasn’t there before, it can’t be right. Oh my god! It wasn’t there before!’ We were absolutely startled.” The object itself is merely the size of a “jelly doughnut”, as they described it. Nonetheless, it is a startling discovery for NASA scientists since they cannot explain the ‘rock’s whereabouts. Therefore, they have already cooked up a couple of possibilities of how the “jelly doughnut” got there.

The first theory is described as the rock belonging to a meteor which has entered the Martian atmosphere, and a fragment that detached from the meteor might have found its place in the exact spot we are looking at now. The other, more plausible, theory is that the rover itself might have tipped it over when it did a turn in place on bedrock, having one of its wheels broken. The manoeuvre might have coupled a portion of the rock to the wheel, which in turn flipped it.

There is still the “third” possibility, as every alien fanatic out there might think, that a Martian threw the rock (obviously ruled out of the question). Whatever the cause might be for the mysterious object’s appearance, we will undoubtedly see more information about it as scientists are eager to analyse it from each and every angle possible (and impossible even).

Thank you Gizmodo for providing us with this information
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