SPACE observers have spotted a strange “drilled” hole on the surface of Mars and have been trying to work out what it is.
Some have speculated whether aliens might be behind it, saying there is “no way nature did that”.
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Conspiracy theorists hoping for evidence of extraterrestrials will be somewhat disappointed to discover it is actually us humans who created the hole.
And it’s not the only one either – there are thought to be more than 30 holes that have been deliberately drilled on the Red Planet.
All were made possible by Nasa with its Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in August 2012.
The wheeled device managed to dig into the planet’s rocky surface for the first time in 2013 using a robotic arm.
It was a milestone moment for space exploration, marking the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mars.
The holes are pretty tiny, only measuring about 1.6cm wide and able to go 6.4cm deep.
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Experts launched the mission to get hold of rock powder samples in search of long-gone wet environments.
While it could be crucial to build our understanding of Mars, not everyone is happy about the holes.
“Billions of years undisturbed, it’s almost sad,” one space sleuth said.
“Some alien civilisation in a few million years is going to find this, long after Earth has been vaporised by nuclear war and will be wondering for years how it got there,” another commented.
But others saw the fun side, saying: “Mars being entirely populated by robots playing around in the soil brings me joy.”
Scientists eventually want to dig even deeper into Mars to finally find out whether life ever existed on the planet.
But Curiosity isn’t equipped to go that far down.
New rover will drill even further
Instead, a new rover named after English DNA pioneer Rosalind Franklin will do the job, drilling a massive two meters underground for biomarkers.
The rover is ready to go but faces an uncertain future due to Russia’s involvement in the launch and the country’s decision to invade Ukraine.
After several delays, the European Space Agency (ESA) said it is “very unlikely” Rosalind Franklin will be able to launch in September as planned.
This is despite scientists working on the project previously telling The Sun that sticking to the launch date is “vital”.
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In other news, people are increasingly unable to tell apart fake faces made by AI and real ones, new research suggests.
Websites could crash in a couple of months if owners fail to make major change ahead of Chrome, Edge and Firefox ‘version 100’ update.
Uber has revealed the worst and best cities for passenger ratings.
And the naughtiest ever emoji combinations to be careful of have been revealed.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
