Space crab? Mars object in NASA pics totally thrills red planet fans

“Spider”, “Alien”, “John Carter”, “awesome Martian space crab” – these are a few suggestions by social media users who apparently thoroughly studied a recent NASA image of Mars which captured a strange object on the surface of the red planet.

The raw image taken by NASA Curiosity somewhere in July was hugely discussed in the Facebook group ‘Journey to the Surface of the Mars’.

“Now this one is AWESOME!!!” wrote the group whose slogan is “They will not tell the truth about MARS.” They even enlarged the NASA image and so that the world could have a better look of ‘the creature’.

“It looks a human kind of face in a type spider body!”, “It's a door”, “John Carter”: users’ imaginations ran unrestrained (John Carter of Mars is a fictional character by Edgar Rice Burroughs).

Some fans of Ridley Scott movies also drew parallels with the organism from Alien franchise.

This is not the first ‘suspected’ image of Mars surface that disturbed social media and even scientists. Earlier in July Curiosity Mars rover found a rock unlike anything it found before, which could contain organic material.

READ MORE: Aliens ahoy! Massive mothership ‘the size of Idaho’ caught in NASA images, say ufologists

NASA said that it was “bedrock with surprisingly high levels of silica [a rock-forming compound containing silicon and oxygen, commonly found on Earth as quartz]."

“High levels of silica in the rock could indicate ideal conditions for preserving ancient organic material, if present, so the science team wants to take a closer look,” NASA wrote. 

Conspiracy theories also appeared around one of raw images taken by Curiosity which showed an alleged pyramid on the Red Planet

“Due to the size of the object about the scale of a small car I would theorize that the artefact is either the capstone of a much larger pyramid possibly buried deep beneath the surface or perhaps a marker stone,” wrote Paranormal Crucible YouTube account which analyses extraterrestrial activity and speculated on the origins of the ‘pyramid’.

The ufologists also found a “levitating alien sphere” on Mars which was recorded by the rover's Mast Camera on April 10, 2015.

“This is ancient technology, and it’s still floating above the surface today. No one knows how old it is, but we do know that it came from a very technologically-advanced species. It has, the ultimate battery,” a statement from the UFO Sightings Daily, a website devoted to possible UFO detections on or above our planet.

These ‘artefacts’, however, in most cases are just a vision defect called pareidolia, a psychological phenomenon of noticing a significant pattern in unexpected places. The ‘man in the moon’ or ‘moon rabbit’ are common examples of such an illusion.