If Olaf, the gentle, sensitive snowman from Disney’s Frozen, had ancestors on other planets, could this be his dusty relative?
On July 13, 1208 Martian days, the Perseverance rover Right Mastcam-Z camera Daily Survey Sending photos to Earth . If you look closely, as Space.com did, you might notice a pile of rocks in the bottom left corner of the photo that resembles a baby snowman.
This little guy may have a drier, dustier build than Olaf’s fluffy, all-white physique, but with a bit of imagination, he could appear to be asking Perseverance a very important question: “Do you want to build a snowman?”
The Perseverance rover is still in Jezero Crater.
Related: Mars rover Perseverance excavates intriguing “Bright Angel” rock formation (photo)
Is it theoretically possible for real snowmen to exist on Mars? The short answer is “probably not.” But there’s a long answer, too.
The Martian atmosphere may be thin, but still Dynamic Climate and Extreme Weather A sufficiently thick atmosphere
The Martian “snowman” is at the bottom left of the image. (Image source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)
According to NASA scientists, there is still water on Mars, but the current atmosphere is thin, so water can only stay liquid for a limited time. Therefore, water on Mars could exist under the polar surface, like ice or saltwater that seasonally runs down hills and crater walls. Perhaps we could craft a “snowman” out of these materials, but we’re not sure it would look like a typical snowman on Earth.
Still, it’s worth taking a moment to enjoy what’s in the new images from NASA’s rover. Making sentimental marks on Martian rocks is not unlike lying down on the grass and trying to identify animals in the clouds overhead.
