NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover stumbles upon a dusty little snowman (photo)

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover stumbles upon a dusty little snowman (photo)

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==

NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its Right Mastcam-Z camera. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover’s mast. This image was acquired on July 13, 2024 (Sol 1208) at the local mean solar time of 13:53:4. | Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/****; editing by Daisy Dobrijevic/Space.comm

If Olaf, a sweet and sensitive snowman from the Disney movie Frozen, had ancestors on other planets, could this perhaps be a dusty relative?

On July 13, which is Sol 1208 on Mars, the Perseverance rover’s

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

spotted an area with several rock formations during

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

of the Red Planet’s surface. It dutifully delivered a

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. If you look closely, as we did here at Space.com, you might notice that in the bottom left corner of the photo, there’s a stack of rocks that resembles a baby snowman!

This little guy might have more of a dry and dusty composition, unlike Olaf’s fluffy and bright white physique, but, if you use  your imagination, it could almost present itself as posing a very important question to Perseverance: “Do you want to build a snowman?”

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, where it landed back on February 18, 2021, but has now started its journey to ascend the crater and move into a new location.

Related: Perseverance Mars rover digs into intriguing ‘Bright Angel’ rock formation (photo)

In theory, could it be possible for a true snowman to exist on Mars? Well, the simple answer is “probably not.” However, there is also a long answer.

Mars might have a thin atmosphere, but it still can whip up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

— anywhere from dust storms to, technically, even snow. Yet, it hasn’t always been this way for the Red Planet. Reports that came out from NASA’s MAVEN mission concluded that, in the past, Mars had a

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

that water could exist on the surface for prolonged periods of time.

data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///ywAAAAAAQABAAACAUwAOw==

A full image of the area where the dusty Mars snowman was found. It’s in the bottom left.

Related Stories:

—

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

— Air sealed in Perseverance’s Mars sample return tubes is as precious as the rocks themselves

— Perseverance Mars rover team revives life-hunting instrument after 6 months of effort

According to NASA scientists, there’s still water on the planet — but with its presently thin atmosphere, that water would only be able to stay in a liquid state for a limited amount of time. So, water on Mars can be located below polar regions’ surface, just as water-ice or as seasonal briny water that meanders down hillsides and crater walls. Perhaps one could make a “snowman” out of those substances with enough tinkering, but I can’t imagine it’d look like a classic Earth-based snowman.

Still, it can’t hurt to take a moment to enjoy what we can spot in the NASA rover’s new image. Attaching sentimental shapes to rocks on Mars is quite the same thing as laying on the grass and identifying animals in the clouds overhead.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#NASAs #Perseverance #Mars #rover #stumbles #dusty #snowman #photo

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up