NASA's Perseverance Rover Captures Mysterious Rock On Mars That Looks Like "Helmet"

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover captured an image of a volcano-shaped rock resembling a weathered battle helmet on August 5, 2025. The rover is currently looking for ancient life on Mars, and also collecting samples of rock for possible Earth return. During the process, the rover often stumbles upon curious rocks.

According to a report by Space.com, the helmet-like rock would help scientists to understand the environmental history of Mars.

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NASA said that the rover acquired this image using its Left Mastcam-Z camera, which is a pair of cameras located high on the rover's mast.

Scientists believe the rock's unique shape and texture could be the result of chemical weathering, mineral precipitation, or volcanic processes.

The rock is composed of spherules, which are tiny, perfectly shaped spheres that have sparked debate among scientists about their origin.

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"This hat-shaped rock is composed of spherules. This rock's target name is Horneflya and it's distinctive less because of its hat shape (which looks to me to be generally consistent with the pyramid shape we often see in of wind-eroded float blocks on the surface of Mars) and more because it's made almost entirely of spherules," David Agle, a spokesperson for the Perseverance team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told the media outlet.

The spherules could have formed through minerals deposited by groundwater in sediment spaces, or molten rock droplets cooling rapidly after volcanic eruptions.

Violent collisions vaporising rock, which then condenses into tiny droplets, can also form such spherules.