NASA orbiter captures image of a bear's face on Mars | CNN (2023)

A bear's face appears to be taking shape on the surface of Mars in this new image captured by the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Two craters form the eyes, a circular fracture forms the face, and a collapsed V-shaped structure represents the nose.

The Curiosity rover discovered this stone, smaller than a penny and resembling a flower or a piece of coral, in Gale Crater on February 24. The small pieces in this photo formed billions of years ago when minerals carried by water cemented the rock.

NASA's Curiosity rover used two cameras to create this selfie in front of "Mont Mercou," a 20-foot rock formation.

The Ingenuity helicopter captured this color image of Mars in April 2021 from 16 feet above the planet's surface.the first color imageever recorded during a flight from a helicopter on Mars.

This July 9, 2013 perspective of the Valles Marineris hemisphere of Mars is actually a mosaic of 102 Viking Orbiter images. In the center is the Valles Marineris gorges system, more than 2,000 kilometers long and up to 8 kilometers deep.

This 2016 selfie of the Curiosity Mars Rover shows the rover at the Quela drill site in the Murray Buttes area of ​​lower Mount Sharp.

This photo of a preserved river channel on Mars was taken from an orbiting satellite, with colors overlaid to show different elevations. Blue is low and yellow is high.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express mission captured this 2018 image of the Korolev crater, more than 80 kilometers wide and filled with water ice, near the North Pole.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter used its HiRISE camera to obtain this view of an unusually textured area on the southern floor of Gale Crater.

The cooled lava helped preserve an imprint of where dunes once moved in a southeastern region of Mars. But it also looks like the symbol from "Star Trek."

Although Mars is not geologically active like Earth, the surface features have been heavily sculpted by the wind. Wind-sculpted features like these, called yardangs, are common on the red planet. The wind forms waves and small dunes in the sand. In the thin atmosphere of Mars, light is not widely scattered, so the shadows cast by yardangs are sharp and dark.

These small hematite-rich concretions are located near Fram Crater, which was visited by NASA's Opportunity rover in April 2004. The area shown is 1.2 inches in diameter. The view comes from the microscope imager on Opportunity's robotic arm, with color information added from the rover's panoramic camera. These minerals suggest that Mars had a watery past.

This image shows the seasonal flows in Valles Marineris on Mars, called return dip lines or RSLs. These Martian landslides occur on the slopes during the spring and summer.

Mars is known to have dust storms in planetary orbit. These 2001 images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter show a dramatic change in the planet's appearance as haze created by southern dust storms dispersed globally.

This composite image, overlooking the higher regions of Mount Sharp, was acquired by NASA's Curiosity rover in September 2015. In the foreground is a long ridge filled with hematite. Just beyond is a mountainous plain rich in clay minerals. And just beyond is a multitude of rounded hills, all rich in sulphate minerals. The changing mineralogy in these layers suggests a changing environment on early Mars, even though they were all exposed to water billions of years ago.

In April 2019, the InSight seismometer recorded a "Marsquake" for the first time.

Perched atop a ridge, Opportunity captured this image from 2016, showing a dust storm from Mars meandering through the valley below. The view goes back to the rover's tracks leading up the north slope of Knudsen Ridge, which forms part of the southern edge of Marathon Valley.

HiRISE captured layered deposits and a bright ice cap at the north pole of Mars.

Nili Patera is a region of Mars where dunes and waves move fast. HiRISE aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter continues to monitor this area every few months for changes on seasonal and annual time scales.

NASA's Curiosity rover captured its highest-resolution panorama of the surface of Mars in late 2019. This includes more than 1,000 images and 1.8 billion pixels.

This image, which combines data from two instruments aboard NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, shows an orbital view of the north polar region of Mars. The ice-rich polar cap is 621 miles wide, and the dark bands within it are deep valleys. To the right of center, a large canyon, Chasma Boreale, nearly bisects the ice sheet. Chasma Boreale is almost as long as the famous Grand Canyon in the United States and is up to 1.2 miles deep.

A spectacular, cool impact crater dominates this image captured by the HiRISE camera in November 2013. The crater spans about 100 feet and is surrounded by a large radiating blast zone. Because the ground where the crater formed is dusty, the new crater appears blue in the enhanced color of the image because the reddish dust in that area has been removed.

This dark mound, called Ireson Hill, is located in the Murray Formation at the bottom of Mount Sharp, near where NASA's Curiosity rover surveyed a linear sand dune in February 2017.

Are Cookies and Cream on Mars? No, they're just polar dunes covered in ice and sand.

The cloud in the center of this image is actually a tower of dust that appeared in 2010 and was captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Blue and white clouds are water vapor.

HiRISE captured this image of a kilometer-wide crater in the southern hemisphere of Mars in June 2014. The crater shows frost on all of its south-facing flanks in late winter, as Mars heads into spring.

The two largest tremors detected by NASA InSight appear to have originated in a region of Mars called the Cerberus Fossae. Scientists have previously detected signs of tectonic activity here, including landslides. This image was captured by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

This image is the first photograph ever taken of the surface of Mars. It was captured on July 20, 1976 by the Viking 1 lander shortly after landing on the planet.