World of the Bizarre

Star Trek Starfleet logo spotted by Curiosity rover on Mars

By T.K. Randall
January 25, 2024 ·  1 comment

There's something very familiar about this rock... Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech From bears and giant crabs to the faces of President Obama and Beaker from The Muppets - there have certainly been a lot of strange sightings on the surface of Mars over the years.

With its barren landscape strewn with randomly shaped boulders, rocky outcrops and other geological features, it's perhaps not surprising that Mars is a prime location to see examples of pareidolia - the human brain's natural tendency to see meaningful shapes in otherwise abstract patterns.

This latest example, which comes courtesy of NASA's long-lived Curiosity rover, is essentially a rock that happens to bear a striking resemblance to the delta-shaped Starfleet emblem from Star Trek.The logo has appeared across multiple Star Trek shows and movies with starship crew members typically wearing communicator badges shaped exactly like it.

The image itself was captured by Curiosity's left navigation camera back on January 9th.

Having now been on Mars since 2012, the rover has certainly proven itself a capable and hardy explorer.

Source: Space.com | Comments (1)

Tags: Mars