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 Right Mastcam-Z camera spotted an area with several rock formations during its daily investigation of the Red Planet’s surface. It dutifully delivered a photo to Earth. 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?”
The Perseverance rover is still located within the Jezero Crater, 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 dynamic climate and extreme weather events — 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 thick enough atmosphere that water could exist on the surface for prolonged periods of time.
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.
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