A newly resurfaced image from NASA’s Mars archive has stirred fresh online debate, with some viewers claiming the odd formation could hint at something moving across the Red Planet’s dusty surface.
The photo was captured by NASA’s Curiosity rover on May 19, 2025, as the long-running mission continued its 14-year effort to study whether Mars may once have had conditions capable of supporting microbial life.
Taken at around 2.40am Coordinated Universal Time on Earth, the image shows a familiar Martian scene: reddish terrain, scattered rocks, low hills and mountains fading into the distance.
But it was a striking pattern etched into the ground that caught attention, with the marks appearing to some observers like a neat line of tire tracks cutting across the landscape.
One social media user wondered aloud: “Are those Curiosity’s tracks we’re seeing?”
Others, however, argued that Curiosity’s own wheel marks look noticeably different from the pattern visible in the NASA image, adding to the mystery surrounding the unusual formation.
The speculation grew after another photo, taken just two minutes later, showed the same markings from a different perspective — a detail that led some to suggest the pattern was unlikely to be a simple camera artifact or a fleeting play of light.
The renewed interest comes after NASA announced in September 2025 that its Perseverance rover had collected a sample containing what the agency described as the clearest signs yet of ancient microbial life on Mars.
Images sent from the Curiosity rover on Mars in 2025 captured a strange pattern some have compared to tire tracks
A second image sent by Curiosity photographed the same track from a different angle
Despite the history-making revelation, both the space agency and White House have maintained that no signs of intelligent, extraterrestrial life have ever been found.
There were no other photos from May 19, 2025 publicly posted by NASA that revealed if more tracks were found or if Curiosity got closer to the strange formation to get a more detailed look.
NASA and military officials have frequently called strange and unexplainable objects in space photos ‘artifacts,’ often blaming them on unusual camera lighting or corrupted data being transmitted back to Earth.
The 2025 image was reposted on Tuesday by social media user Kari Sivertzen, a space enthusiast who regularly shares public NASA images that contain strange anomalies that cannot be easily explained.
Sivertzen said on X: ‘Sometimes I spot things that catch my eye, and I share them here. I believe there is life on other planets, and since NASA has found potential traces of life on Mars, it’s the perfect place to look.’
While viewers were immediately drawn to the strange track marks, Sivertzen said she shared the rover’s photo to point out clues that a body of water may have existed on Mars in the distant past.
‘What I’m actually highlighting here are the depressions in the surrounding area, which look quite distinct and could be consistent with past water activity or an impact,’ Sivertzen posted.
However, the photo had some lining up Curiosity’s wheel marks to the uniform pattern seen on Mars, which appeared to show a straight line down the center of the track, with evenly spaced prints closely distributed in a straight line – just like a tire in motion.
A social media user to shared the 2025 Mars image said it also revealed signs of an ancient body of water on the planet
Curiosity landed on Mars in 2012 to find evidence that the planet had conditions that could support microbial life billions of years ago
One person replied to the X post: ‘It’s not the rover, at least what I think, since that would have left two tracks and the “pattern” doesn’t match other rover tracks.’
The X user pointed out that Curiosity has no center line in its tire tracks, and the treads also feature a jagged pattern with large square blocks between them.
This was not the first strange pattern or formation astronomy enthusiasts have spotted on the Red Planet.
Last month, Sivertzen shared another shocking photo from Curiosity appearing to show a jellyfish-like being or mechanical device moving along Mars’ Gale Crater.
The unearthed panorama from 2023 revealed a small figure in the left corner of the image that appeared to have a large black body perched atop two spindly legs.
Images taken of the same area less than a minute earlier showed no sign of the mysterious figure.
The object in 2023 was seen in Gale Crater and was not present in images taken seconds before
Curiosity rover has been exploring Gale Crater since 2012. The area is a huge impact crater roughly the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, with a towering mountain rising from its center.
Scientists believe this location will provide more evidence that life once existed on Mars thousands, and possibly millions, of years ago.
Like the Perseverance rover, it is using onboard instruments to study rock layers, clay deposits and climate history to look for microbial traces of life.
Skeptics have previously claimed that people see strange images in the Martian landscape because the human brain naturally attempts to recognize familiar shapes in ambiguous images, a phenomenon known as pareidolia.
It is the same psychological effect that can cause people to see faces in clouds, animals in rock formations or human-made structures across the barren Martian landscape.
Mars has produced several famous examples, most notably the so-called ‘Face on Mars,’ which was photographed by NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter in 1976.
Higher-resolution images later revealed that the apparent face was an ordinary eroded hill whose human-like appearance resulted from shadows and the relatively poor quality of the original photograph.
NASA and the Trump Administration are now planning for the first manned mission to Mars by the end of the decade.
