It looks like a tiny doorway that leads to an underground Martian tomb — but it’s probably just old sand. NASA’s Curiosity rover has been studying Mars’ surface features for just more than 10 years and observed a foot-high topographical feature on Mount Sharp last week. A photo of the area was published on NASA’s public gallery page. Ashwin Vasavada, a project scientist in the Mars Science Laboratory, told Gizmodo in a report published today that the region was formed by ancient sand dunes that created sandstone outcroppings over time. The “door” is most likely a small fracture.
The Curiosity rover found the Mars "door" on May 7 while imaging a mound known as the East Cliffs in the Gale Crater, which the rover has been exploring since its landing in 2012. The rover used its Mastcam instrument to take the image of the strange fissure, which is only 12 inches (30 centimeters) tall and 16 inches (40 centimeters) wide, NASA said in a statement. Clearly, humans would have difficulties entering the cliff through this "door," which is why the NASA team dubbed it only the "dog door." Commenting on the internet frenzy surrounding the discovery of the "door", the Curiosity team said on Twitter that the tendency of a human brain to look for patterns that make sense in ambiguous shapes (called "pareidolia"), is behind the internet sensation.
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https://andoria.one/mars-dog-door-found-by-curiosity-rover-is-just-a-weird-rock/
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