NASA’s Perseverance rover has actually come across a curious, volcano-shaped rock on the surface area of Mars that looks rather like a weathered fight helmet.

Caught by the rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument on Aug. 5, 2025, the rock shows a pointed peak and pitted nodular texture that stimulates a picture of armor created centuries back. On Earthcomparable blemish textures can form through chemical wear and tear, mineral rainfall or perhaps volcanic procedures. Determination discovered a comparable rock in March 2025.

And it’s these spherules that have actually researchers interested. “This hat-shaped rock is composed of spherules. This rock’s target name is Horneflya and it’s distinctive less because of its hat shape (which looks to me to be generally consistent with the pyramid shape we often see in of wind-eroded float blocks on the surface of Mars) and more because it’s made almost entirely of spherules,” David Agle, a representative for the Perseverance group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, informed Space.com.Researchers believe that in some rocks seen on Mars, these spherules form when groundwater travelled through pores in sedimentary rocks. They’re not sure if all of them formed this method; Perseverance’s science group will have its work cut out for it evaluating more rocks to browse for responses to this Martian geology secret and other burning Red Planet concerns.

The Mastcam-Z instrument, a set of zoom-capable cams on Perseverance’s neck-like mast, permits researchers to catch high-resolution stereo images and area uncommon functions like this spherule-covered “helmet” rock from a range.

The Martian rock appears like a 17th-century Dutch “pot” helmet. (Image credit: Left: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU. : Rogers Fund, 1904)Determination has actually discovered a growing gallery of odd rock shapes, from donut-like meteorites to avocado-like stones. These kinds of images are examples of a phenomenon referred to as pareidolia, which explains the human brain’s propensity to enforce a familiar pattern on otherwise random visual information– whether that’s a face in the clouds, a bunny in the moon, or a middle ages helmet on the Martian surface area.In the meantime, the helmet rock stays an engaging photo of Martian history. Functions like this aid researchers piece together the Red Planet’s ecological history, demonstrating how wind, water and internal procedures might have shaped the landscape over billions of years.