A party hat-shaped object spotted on Mars is drawing renewed scrutiny, with some experts suggesting it could be evidence of something major while others offered a trashy explanation for the cone.
The object — roughly 20 centimeters long with a flat end — was first photographed by NASA’s Curiosity Rover in 2022 in Gale Crater near the Red Planet’s equator, and flagged on March 8 by Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb in a post on Medium.
“Should we just assume that the mysterious cylinder is human-made debris and move on or turn back the rover to figure out whether its origin is different?” Loeb asked in a Medium post.
Loeb urged NASA to dispatch the small SUV-sized Curiosity Rover, currently on the slopes of Mars’ Mount Sharp, to investigate the object, which was about 5 miles away.
“The most likely explanation is that it corresponds to human-made debris,” Loeb wrote.
“In my opinion, NASA should prioritize going back to examine the cylinder relative to the more mundane tasks of the Curiosity rover is pursuing,” Loeb told The Post.
“NASA is funded by the taxpayers and if we poll taxpayers they would likely agree with me that understanding the origin of the mysterious cylinder should be the top priority of Curiosity,” Loeb concluded.
The object was originally pulled from the trove of NASA photos by amateur Mars researcher Rami Bar Ilan and brought to Loeb’s attention by Dr. Jan Spacek from the Florida-based Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution.
NASA has not officially identified the object.
The cone could in fact be part of the Curiosity mission itself, Loeb suggested, with the robot possibly shedding the hardware during its long-standing operation.
The rover has been traversing that region since 2012.
