Space and Physics
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From mysterious purple-coated rocks to formations that look a bit like a doorway, our trusty Martian robot pals have made some cool and sometimes strange findings over the years.
Every now and then, they capture an image of a rock that looks completely out of place in the Martian landscape. This happened on Friday, when the Mars Perseverance rover snapped several images of a large, donut-shaped rock.
The rock looks somewhat out of place against the Martian landscape, and it's possible that that's because it isn't actually from Mars. According to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, the rock could be "a large meteorite alongside smaller pieces".
Mars is the closest planet in the Solar System to the asteroid belt, and is regularly battered by stray rocks from it. As the atmosphere is only 1 percent as thick as Earth's, the rocks often pass through it without breaking up too much. In fact, NASA have even captured the sound of a meteoroid slamming into the planet.
More investigation is required to say for sure that the donut-rock is a meteorite, or whether it is a rock weathered in an unusual way. Mars Rovers have found meteorites and potential meteorites before, though that wouldn't make such a find (an alien rock on an alien planet) any less cool.
In 2014, there was even another donut-rock mystery, after a small, delicious-looking rock appeared in front of the Opportunity rover in an area that had been photographed and shown to contain no such rock. It was determined by NASA that the rock had likely been knocked out of the rover's wheels, however, rather than confirming the existence of a Martian Homer Simpson.
