Categories: Mars

Gorilla On Mars?

Mars Gorilla. Credit: NASA/JPL, inset Io9

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Classify this one under the same nonsense as the “Bigfoot on Mars” the wooden plank on Mars, or perhaps even the “Face on Mars.” Just an optical illusions, folks from a very, very zoomed in image from the Mars rovers. The Sun newspaper seemingly started this foolishness on what must have been a slow news day.

Doug Ellison from Unmanned Spaceflight put together this “poster” about the gorilla (Click image for larger version):

And the folks at Image Shack show the real dimensions of the rock:

The original image has been around awhile. It was taken by the Opportunity rover back on sol 87 in 2004. Click here to see the original image. Can you see any gorillas? I’m sure if you look really close and zoom in and distort any of the rocks you can see whatever you fancy.

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Sources: Planetary Blog, Io9

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/