NASA rover Perseverance finds strange 'doughnut shaped' rock on Mars
NASA's Mars rover Perseverance has sent back a picture of a big doughnut-shaped rock after it stumbled upon the sight while exploring the red planet.
For the last couple of years, Perseverance has been roaming Mars to search for signs of ancient life and collect samples of rock which it stores in sealed tubes for pickup by a future mission, which could then transport them back to Earth.
It's so far collected 20 rock samples and more than 482,000 images, which is a lot of images for two years.
Advert
But considering how many pictures us Earthlings take of sunsets, food and dogs every day, it seems about right.
Once of Perseverance's most recent snaps was shared by the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI) in Mountain View, California on Monday (26 June), after Perseverance captured it on 23 June.
The image, taken using the rover's SuperCam Remote Micro-Imager, revealed a rock straight out of Homer Simpson's dreams, with a hole in the middle making it look like some sort of silver doughnut.
Or a bagel, if you're more of a savoury person.
The holey rock was surrounded by smaller chunks of stone which seemed to match it in colour, suggesting they were once one big rock.
The objects were in the distance of the photo, but the SETI has speculated that the doughnut-shaped discovery could have fallen to Mars from outer space, writing: "[It] could be a large meteorite alongside smaller pieces."
Such a suggestion isn't entirely out of the ordinary, as Mars rovers have previously come across other objects which scientists believe to be potential meteorites.
Perseverance found a similar rock just a few weeks after it touched down on Mars in 2021, and its predecessor Curiosity discovered its own collection of space rocks after it arrived on the planet in August 2012.
As well as being one of another potential objects that have flown in from space, the doughnut-shaped rock is also one of two discoveries that have been likened to a sweet treat.
In January 2014, NASA's Opportunity rover came across a stone which was white on the outside and red on the inside, prompting those involved in the mission to compare it to a jelly doughnut.
Mars is obviously the place to be if you have a sweet tooth - though you'd probably need a good dentist if you actually attempted to bite into any of these 'doughtnuts'.
Emily Brown