By Vania Raebel | October 4, 2019
The Mars Tadpole
First a fish, and now, a baby frog? The resemblance is truly uncanny: this formation captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter really does look like a tadpole (or a yo-yo, or a sperm, depending on your perspective). However, Mars is far from being home to amphibian life. The spherical object is merely a crater, and what seems like a tail is simply a result of water movement.
In February of 2018, NASA explained how this tadpole formation came to be. According to the agency, “water is flowing outward because we have the necessary terrain-height information.” And while it is true that the red planet used to contain water some million years ago, it is far from being capable of hosting amphibian life.
