NASA's Perseverance rover has added to its trove of curious finds, as the space agency published a photo of a rock on the surface of Mars that looks like a centuries-old helmet.
The rock has a pointed peak, a flared "brim," and textures that could lead reasonable observers to compare it to a witch's hat or a tent.
The texture is formed by spherules on the rock. Similar formations found on Earth are created through chemical weathering, mineral precipitation or volcanic processes, according to Space.com.
The image, taken Aug. 5 by the rover's Left Mastcam-Z camera, was chosen as the photo of the week for week 234 of its mission on Mars.
"This rock's target name is Horneflya and it's distinctive less because of its hat shape (which looks to me to be generally consistent with the pyramid shape we often see in of wind-eroded float blocks on the surface of Mars) and more because it's made almost entirely of spherules," David Agle, a spokesperson for the Perseverance team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told the space news outlet.
