Mars rock resembling iconic Star Trek symbol snapped by NASA’s Curiosity rover

A rock resembling the logo from Star Trek was discovered by NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars.

NASA's long-running Curiosity captured the image of a Mars rock that looks similar to the iconic delta-shaped Starfleet emblem that officers wear on their uniforms in the sci-fi series. While it is illogical to say that a Starfleet landing party walked near Curiosity's roving grounds, Star Trek fans are thrilled to see the symbol on the Red Planet's surface.

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An amateur astronomer, Stuart Atkinson, spotted the Star Trek symbol and joked about it on X. He wrote, "I bet the Star Trek fans on the @MarsCuriosity team smiled like Cheshire Cats when they saw this new image appear on their screens." To this, an X user replied, "This must be their head office in mars.."

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NASA's Curiosity rover has been on Mars since 2012 and continues to capture and investigate the life there. Currently, it is climbing a mountain nicknamed Mount Sharp (Aeolis Mons) as part of a mission to analyse the layers entrenched in it to know how water flowed on Mars several years ago.

In September 2023, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory officials said, "Different layers of Mount Sharp represent different eras of Martian history. As Curiosity ascends, scientists learn more about how the landscape changed over time." The statement added that the rover was in a sulphate-packed zone, which might be "the highest elevation layer it will ever visit."

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According to the mission's blog, the rover captured the image of the Starfleet symbol when it was about to do "contact science on a flat block of dark-toned bedrock." The blog stated that one of its goals is to study the "composition and texture of the dark bands we've been observing from orbit" using various instruments.

After the Curiosity rover's success at the Gale Crater, NASA sent a follow-up rover mission, named Perseverance, to the Jezero Crater on Mars in 2020. Perseverance aims to hunt for evidence of ancient life on the Red Planet.

NASA also aims to launch another mission to bring the caches of rocks collected by Perseverance. However, funding and technology have pushed the expected return date to 2031.

(With inputs from agencies)