Featured Image Credit: NASA / Handout / Getty
Thanks to sophisticated rovers and imaging technology, we've been treated to ever-more detailed glimpses of the Red Planet's surface.
NASA's Perseverance rover has been at the forefront of this exploration, capturing high-definition images and video that make Mars feel closer than ever before.
But some of the latest footage has sparked an unexpected reaction online.
According to Space.com, Perseverance touched down on the floor of Jezero Crater back in February 2024, tasked with searching for evidence of ancient life on Mars and collecting samples for analysis back on Earth.
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Safe to say, the spectacular views have left viewers mesmerised.
"Awesome space place," one replied on X to a shared video by X user aether_coin, while another wrote: "This is amazing".
A similar post made its way around Reddit with the caption: "Actual footage from another world: Mars right now, 225 million miles away. Truly mind-blowing rover view".
Aside from being marvelled by some viewers, others on social media felt the landscape looked eerily similar to one US state.
One user outright reacted on Reddit: "That’s Arizona".
"So it looks like Arizona," another user on X remarked.
"isn't this the view of off-central Arizona?" a third user questioned.
"That’s Arizona you ain’t fooling me," someone else commented.
Later that year, Perseverance reportedly reached the rim of the Red Planet's Jezero Crater, completing a gruelling 3.5-month climb during which it ascended roughly 1,640 vertical feet (500 metres).
"The Northern Rim campaign brings us completely new scientific riches as Perseverance roves into fundamentally new geology,” Ken Farley, project scientist for Perseverance at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a previous statement, as per Space.com.
"It marks our transition from rocks that partially filled Jezero Crater when it was formed by a massive impact about 3.9 billion years ago to rocks from deep down inside Mars that were thrown upward to form the crater rim after impact.".
He added: "These rocks represent pieces of early Martian crust and are among the oldest rocks found anywhere in the solar system. Investigating them could help us understand what Mars — and our own planet — may have looked like in the beginning."
In other news, for the first time, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) made history last December by using AI to map Perseverance's route for the very first time.
In December 2025, two tests were planned using Anthropic's Claude AI models and reviewed by JPL engineers to ensure the AI didn't accidentally drive the rover into danger. It turned out to be a whopping success, as Perseverance travelled just under 1,500 feet across both drives without any issues.
