The Perseverance rover has been dutifully trundling around the surface of Mars for a few years now, since its successful landing back in 2021.
It was an astonishingly successful mission already, but the data that the rover sends back is hugely important, and it's also provided some of the first truly easy-to-view footage and photos of the surface of Mars in that time.
This has included some 360-degree shots that have been impressing people pretty consistently, as demonstrated by a hugely popular Reddit post this week.
The subreddit, Damnthatsinteresting, shows footage of one of those photos, moving around it to give a full view of the environment around the rover, and it's messing with people's heads a little.
One popular comment said: "I always see these pics of Mars and stuff and can't help but think it's Earth despite knowing better. Like I just have a feeling if I was there and kept walking I'd SURELY find a town. But I won't, I'll circle the whole planet and find nothing, not even a lake. Weird."
Advert
This seems to have really chimed with people watching the video, with others having observed that something about the almost blue-looking sky just looks incredibly terrestrial.
A reply to that comment read: "I get what you mean. From moon walks I expect other planets to not have a sky Color but if you actually were on Mars I bet the different gravity would tip you off that there’s no McD yet".
Obviously, that ends on a funny note, but the core idea that this once mysterious planet now looks mundane and almost just a bit monotonous is pretty amazing.
The difficulty of getting your head around the difference between Mars and Earth when you see a photo like this is also touched on by another comment.
Someone commented: "Our brains are wired to think it's hot, but it's deathly cold right there. Nothing. Being on Mars would be awesome for about nine minutes. Then, just about every single human would want to go home."
This is another great point since the footage shows what looks like a baked red desert, but the differences in atmosphere actually make it the opposite.
According to NASA, the surface temperature of Mars doesn't ever get much higher than 70 degrees Fahrenheit and sometimes gets as low as -225 degrees, the sort of cold that you don't ever want to experience.
In 2022 the Perseverance rover discovered diverse organic matter in the Jezero crater on Mars. The findings suggest that a more complex system than previously thought may have existed in the past.