English Letters on Martian Surface Object?

Folks have posted some pretty interesting findings from Mars/Moon photos over the years and, coupled with that, I’ve always known human error is a thing. If there’s anything being hidden, nasa (or whomever edits these, formally) would miss things along the way - law of large numbers. The findings of others are what sparked my curiosity - it’s adult “Where’s Waldo” of sorts .

Today I found this image:



mars.nasa.gov...

I looked at the larger black rocked in the center-ish right of the photo, zoomed in and as I swept by it looks like fairly evenly spaced capital letters next to said blacked out rock:



There were two photos from the area, so I went to the next one:

I can’t imbed the original image for some reason (it is in the link), but the letters remain:



mars.nasa.gov...

These were shot from the ChemCam 1/2/22 with no information about scale, distance or location. I’m a little surprised they used the ChemCam for an uphill shot like that which appears to be at a distance - my historical searching suggests to me the ChemCam isn’t intended for lang range photos like a MastCam.

Scale matters less to me than the implications of English letters being on an object on the Martian surface when the curiosity rover is as far as it is from where it first landed. This could be a picture of a bracelet or a hangar door and it wouldn’t really matter.

Could it be Pareidolia? Sure. I’m posting because these look pretty obvious and don’t take a lot of effort to view as something other than a rock.

Maybe others with better photo editing skills can help confirm or deny!

a reply to: VulcanWerks

MMC?

2100?

originally posted by: Wide-Eyes
a reply to: VulcanWerks

MMC?

2100?

That’s kind of what I’m thinking - or at least it’s on the drawing board.

With less clarity, the letter (if it’s a letter) after the C may be an A.

MCA or MMCA… there’s a final “letter” after the suspected A but I can’t make it all out.

a reply to: VulcanWerks

I can make out "M M Capris" but it's a stretch at best. I'm sure it's just pareidolia but we never know. Interesting post, thank you.

I thought it was a heart and the words NC after

I think it's OMG. a reply to: Spacespider

I don’t see anything. Can someone point it out.

a reply to: VulcanWerks

This doesn't look like pareidolia to me. That's the first thing I try to avoid when I look at pics from other Planets. Since NASA is used to touching up photos, could it be one of the people that actually do the touching up; just thought that it would be cool to add their initials?

originally posted by: stelth2
a reply to: VulcanWerks

This doesn't look like pareidolia to me. That's the first thing I try to avoid when I look at pics from other Planets. Since NASA is used to touching up photos, could it be one of the people that actually do the touching up; just thought that it would be cool to add their initials?

That’s an interesting idea about the initials.

It’s possible but I can say that I’ve looked at a lot of Nasa photos over the years - easily a thousand or more - and never encountered initials so for me it would be a rare occurrence.

Could it be a tag or something like that from one of the probes?
Maybe something that was torn lose on re entry and held on long enough to drop off when it was close to landing ?

Defunct equipment from one of the prior missions to Mars?

mars.nasa.gov...

a reply to: VulcanWerks

originally posted by: DAVID64
Could it be a tag or something like that from one of the probes?
Maybe something that was torn lose on re entry and held on long enough to drop off when it was close to landing ?

This has potential, but remember this is the Curiosity rover that has been there for years. Wiki says it has now traveled about 16.5 miles.

It’s possible it’s a piece of debris - which would make it the only one I’ve found.

I’m also not sure if letters that would fit in that order were part of any of the craft that landed Curiosity in the first place.

I’m not seeing it, can someone circle or point to it on the big pic? Not saying it’s not there or anything like that.

Never mind, I see it now, very interesting.


If that’s an object , turn the first rock upward on the right side, and line it up with the other rock and you could have C N C ?

originally posted by: Buvvy
Defunct equipment from one of the prior missions to Mars?

mars.nasa.gov...

a reply to: VulcanWerks

I hadn’t considered that angle. It’s possible but it appears not that many failed missions “crashed” per se.

I tend to think it’s not debris from a previous mission as more I tinkered with the images, the more it seemed as though they were edited in some way (or the subject matter in some way distorts how the image looks for unknown reasons).

If they’re editing them… there must be a reason. If it were just debris they’d probably call the imagine out and say something like “it’s challenging to get to Mars” and simply say it’s debris - no issue/case closed.

The former mission debris is plausible but I still get the sense the portion of the image in question was intended to be less than clear - it doesn’t appear to want attention called to it.

More of a thought here than a point -

When looking at an image like this, perspective is important - and not just the image.

If you take the stance we publicly know 90% or more of what’s really going on with Mars then someone would probably be hyper skeptical of the image being anything but an oddity.

If someone thinks we could have been working on getting to Mars for 60 years or more it wouldn’t be shocking if we had some debris laying around on the planet - or maybe this isn’t debris at all but equipment of some type.

Even if the truth is in the middle.. the photo was edited, attention wasn’t called to the “letters”, and the probability of rocks spelling out in the same font at the same size MC or NC or UZ read from a different angle have to be insanely low.

I’ll go with Pareidolia or natural terraced (stepped) erosion……and shadows overall.




👽🛸🍺

a reply to: Ophiuchus1

thank you for this.
I'm old and eyes don't work as well as they used to.

DMC? Maybe Doc Brown crashed his DeLorean on Mars while time traveling?

I don't see it, but reminds me of the "debunked" moon "prop" rock- a hair or other artifact apparently makes it appear that a character has been stamped into a rock. This was touted as proof that the moon landings were (are?) a hoax by Bart Sibrel and others.

source


ETA: I had trouble with the source links, but I do see it now that it has been highlighted- Thanks!

No matter what, we all have to admit that it’s pretty interesting. But until we get boots on the ground and see things with our own eyes, we just will have to wonder about it. Extraordinary catch by the way, don’t know how you managed to catch this one.