A 2014 photograph of Mars taken by NASA's Opportunity rover has resurfaced online after claims that a rock formation resembles an alien gun.
Scott C Waring, a Martian researcher from UFO Sighting Daily, posted the image on social media platform X on Tuesday. Waring suggested the object is evidence of why the space agency sent a rover to Mars to retrieve alien technology.
"Alien gun on Mars photos, only one still exists, others deleted by NASA," Waring wrote on X. He previously circulated the image in a blog post, writing that the supposed weapon was "about one foot long."
"I have to admit... It's incredible," Waring shared. "The exact location of the gun is at SOL 3773, which is between Mt Edgecumbe and Wdowiak Ridge."
NASA's Opportunity rover landed on Mars on January 25, 2004, touching down in a small impact crater known as Eagle Crater on Meridiani Planum. The robot fell silent in June 2018 during a severe, planet-wide dust storm that blocked sunlight from reaching its panels, leading NASA to officially declare the mission complete in February 2019 after months of attempting to re-establish contact.
Social media reactions and pareidolia
The resurgence of the photograph has drawn widespread skepticism online. Commenting on Waring's post, one X user wrote, "I'm not an expert, but I believe this is a rock." Another user joked, "Why would aliens have guns designed for human hands and fingers? lol."
NASA has consistently maintained that it has no evidence of extraterrestrial life and has yet to find any signs of current or past life on Mars.
Scientists and observers note that such sightings are classic cases of pareidolia, a psychological response where the human brain perceives faces, tools, or other familiar objects in random patterns and rock formations.
Previous claims of Martian artifacts
Waring has been sharing images of oddly shaped rocks on the Red Planet for about a decade. On August 24, 2016, he highlighted an Opportunity rover photograph taken in 2013, claiming it showed a lone shoe on the edge of a crater.
"While looking through some Mars rover photos, I found a lone shoe on the edge of the crater," Waring wrote on his website at the time. "This is probably a shoe of a species that was at war long ago, the shoe being the lone evidence that the person had ever existed."
The NASA image shows a cluster of rocks spread across the dusty Martian surface, with the object visible among the rubble to the right. While critics view it as simply another rock, Waring insisted the object was evidence of a fallen soldier.
"How many times on a battlefield or at a catastrophic event have we seen photos in the newspaper of the shoes of victims...alone...evidence of how hard they were hit, how fast they were taken from us? Well, this is such evidence," Waring wrote.
