Speaking to the New York Post<\/a>, a NASA spokesperson clarified that the metallic looking object seemed to just be a rock that had been shaped by Mars’ high-speed winds \u2014 and the interpretation of its unusual party hat shape could be an example of the psychological phenomenon pareidolia<\/a>, when humans see recognizable shapes in clouds, rock formations or otherwise unrelated objects.<\/p>\n “We’ve seen many, many Martian rocks that exhibit shapes that, from a particular angle, look like a more familiar shape,” the NASA spokesperson told the Post, noting that the object was measured at around 1 cm and was photographed by the rover from 13 feet away.<\/p>\n Image taken by Mast Camera (Mastcam) onboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity in 2022. Winds on Mars are thought of as a dominant force shaping landscapes, despite the planet’s thin air, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory<\/a>. The planet’s winds have been thought to have been powerful enough to help move sand and form mountains, as well as other formations \u2014 including an oddly placed mountain that is in the middle of a crater.<\/p>\n However, astrophysicist Loeb pushed back against NASA’s statement about the party hat-shaped rock, calling on the space agency to share a similar example of a cylindrical object that had been shaped by the wind.<\/p>\n \u201cThe image clearly shows that there is no rock resembling this anomalous object within its natural environment,\u201d Loeb told the Post. “If this object is a rock, we should see other examples of it.”<\/p>\n This isn’t the first time that unusually shaped objects have been photographed on Mars’ surface.<\/p>\n A self-portrait of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows the robot at a drilled sample site called “Duluth” on the lower slopes of Mount Sharp in Mars on June 20, 2018. Last year, NASA scientists wrote about a newly photographed rock comprised of hundreds of strange millimeter-sized spheres<\/a>, and several months prior, the Perseverance rover snapped some shots of “popcorn-like textures in sedimentary rocks exposed in the Jezero crater inlet channel.”<\/p>\n Never miss a story \u2014 sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter<\/a> to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer\u200b\u200b, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.<\/p>\n In 2022, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captured an image of a hill on the planet that many believed to be shaped like a bear.<\/p>\n “A V-shaped collapse structure makes the nose, two craters form the eyes, and a circular fracture pattern shapes the head. The circular fracture pattern might be due to the settling of a deposit over a buried impact crater,” NASA explained<\/a> at the time.<\/p>\n The following year, Curiosity<\/a> \u2014 which was the largest and most capable rover ever sent to Mars when it launched in 2011 \u2014 snapped a close-up view of a rock nicknamed “Terra Firme<\/a>,” which is said to look like the open pages of a book.<\/p>\n NASA did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for further information.<\/p>\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/3872a5dd6a9d14a0a10a13a1df7c59c7.jpeg\"\/)
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Credit: NASA<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/332f7761de53bc609f4c91d5c52ea9b5.jpeg\"\/)
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Credit: NASA\/JPL-CALTECH\/MSSS \/ HANDOUT\/Anadolu Agency\/Getty<\/p>\n