Mysterious Circular Island On Mars Leaves NASA Scientists Confused [Photo]

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Spacecraft observed a strange island located in the planet’s Athabasca region.

The Huffington Post notes that the image looks to many like some sort of deformed waffle, and is one of the many mysterious landforms found by the Mars Orbiter Spacecraft. This particular image is being described by scientists as an enigmatic landform. The circular feature is nearly 1.2 miles wide, and is surrounded by a “sea” of smooth-looking lava flows. The surrounding of lava is not that baffling, as the Athabasca region contains some of the youngest lava flows on Mars. Therefore, scientists feel it is not unlikely that the mysterious feature was created by some sort of volcanism.

The et Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology released the following statement regarding the interesting circular Mars island.

“Perhaps lava has intruded underneath this mound and pushed it up from beneath. It looks as if material is missing from the mound, so it is also possible that there was a significant amount of ice in the mound that was driven out by the heat of the lava. There are an array of features like this in the region that continue to puzzle scientists. We hope that close inspection of this HiRISE image, and others around it, will provide some clues regarding its formation.”

It is noted that HiRISE is one of six instruments on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The HiRISE was responsible for capturing this particular image from Mars.

This isn’t the first image to baffle scientists. It seems that Mars is full of interesting land features that continue to puzzle NASA.

This is another snapshot from the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It shows dunes and ripples in the sand. Experts speculate, but are uncertain, that the dunes are composed of basaltic sand. This would be sand that comes from volcanic rock, which makes them darker than the surrounding sand ripples.

What do you think of the HiRISE images of Mars? Is there another explanation for how the strange “island” may have formed?