NASA Looks Down at Mars, Sees Adorable Bear Face Staring Back

This story is part of Welcome to Mars, our series exploring the red planet.

Is that you, Smokey? NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped a view of Mars that should trigger your pareidolia instincts. Pareidolia is the human tendency to see familiar objects in random shapes. In this case, it's totally a bear.

The University of Arizona runs the HiRise (High Resolution Imaging Experiment) camera on board MRO. It featured the bear-like formation as a HiRise image of the day on Wednesday.

The "face," captured by MRO in December, is bigger than your average bear. Aversion of the image with a scale shows it stretches roughly 2,000 meters (6,560 feet) across.

Since we've established this isn't a real bear's face or even bear art made by Mars' nonexistent intelligent aliens, what is it? "There's a hill with a V-shaped collapse structure (the nose), two craters (the eyes), and a circular fracture pattern (the head)," the HiRise team said. "The circular fracture pattern might be due to the settling of a deposit over a buried impact crater." The nose might be formed by a volcanic or mud vent, so the material deposited over the crater could be lava or mud.

HiRise has a knack for finding imaginative faces on Mars. There's the Happy Face Crater, Beaker from The Muppet Show and, oddly enough, Ed Asner. So spotting a bear's mug is just another day on the red planet. Said the HiRise team, "Maybe just grin and bear it."

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NASA Looks Down at Mars, Sees Adorable Bear Face Staring Back