Strange ‘jellyfish’ object spotted on Mars in NASA’s Curiosity image. Is it a UFO?

Ever since it landed on Mars in 2012, NASA’s Curiosity rover has snapped thousands of images of the planet. Some of the images are so bizarre that they make us question what’s really out there. One such image was spotted back in 2023. In the image, space enthusiasts have noticed a strange object that looks almost like a jellyfish. In fact, some even refer to it as a ‘jellyfish UFO’. 

But is it just a trick of the camera, or is it really something more than a rock? Here’s what we know about the mysterious image.

This photo was taken on August 20, 2023. Here you can see Gale Crater, a 96-mile-wide impact site that has been on Mars for billions of years. But what really catches the eye is a small, tripod-shaped object standing on the slopes in the corner of the frame.

And what’s even stranger is that, when another image was taken of that ground patch a few minutes later, the place appeared empty. Also, this was the last photo NASA released from Curiosity that day. The rover's next public photo was released nearly two hours later, and by that time, the rover’s camera was pointed in a different direction.

Space enthusiast Kari Sivertzen spotted this image in NASA's public archive and shared it on X. Sivertzen told followers, '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.'

Adding to this, independent Mars researcher Jean Ward described the object as a jellyfish-shaped UFO. He also noted that it "seems to be interacting with the surface” and looked more like the towering alien machines as seen in War of the Worlds.

As this image surfaced online, some people wondered if it could be the Ingenuity instead. It’s the same small NASA helicopter that made history in 2021 with its first powered flight on another planet. But the geography doesn't add up for it to be the helicopter.

Kari Sivertzen clarified that “the Mars helicopter is not close to the Curiosity rover. The helicopter, named Ingenuity, operated alongside the Perseverance rover in Jezero Crater. Meanwhile, the Curiosity rover explores Gale Crater, which is roughly 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers ) away.”

As of now, NASA has not made any comments on this image. But the mission scientists routinely describe one-off shapes like this as "artifacts", which is a term used for corrupted pixels or compression errors that appear in the dataset as it travels millions of miles back to Earth. Plus, since there is no second frame confirming that the object was there, no definitive conclusions can be made. 

This was not the first time NASA spotted strange objects on Mars and other planets. In fact, in one of the UFO files released by the Pentagon, the U.S. department shared an image that shows three "dots" in a triangular formation in the lunar sky. This image was captured during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.