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It’s a lizard, it’s a cat, it’s a … whimsical Martian rock!
The Mars Curiosity rover recently got a glimpse of this cute little rock feature in Gale Crater, where the rover has been exploring since 2012. The tiny textured arch is only about 6.5 inches (16.5 centimeters) tall, but its idiosyncratic shape had mission scientists excited.
“I continue to be dazzled by the textures we’re seeing, especially the prevalence of centimeter sized bumps and lumps poking out of the bedrock,” planetary geologist Abigail Fraeman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote in a blog post about the feature.