Perseverance Mars rover spots weird snake-head rock and balancing boulder
Jun 14 2020
This is a truly otherworldly landscape.
NASA's Perseverance rover has rolled up to some odd and intriguing Martian terrain.
On Sunday (June 12), the car-sized Perseverance snapped a photo that could be mistaken for a still from an "Indiana Jones" movie. At the left of the tableau, a boulder perches precariously atop a slab of gray rock. And at right-center, a formation that looks very much like an open-mouthed snake head juts from a layered reddish butte.
If this were an "Indiana Jones" movie, that butte would house the lair of an evil snake-worshipping cult that Indy would have to take on, shuddering all the while. (Indy hates snakes, presumably regardless of which planet they happen to inhabit.)
The Perseverance team is doubtless excited about this Mars landscape, and for far less fanciful reasons. The layered butte looks like it's part of the ancient river delta that once existed inside the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater, where the six-wheeled robot and its tiny companion, the Ingenuity helicopter, landed in February 2021.
https://www.space.com/mars-rover-perseverance-balancing-boulder-photo