Aliens on Mars? NASA explains the ‘light’ on Mars image by Curiosity

Tons of conspiracy theory websites and scores of so-called ‘alien hunters’ have gone bonkers over the recent Mars photograph surfacing the web. The photograph was taken by the Curiosity, a NASA’s rover studying the surface of the Mars. The picture shows a small speck of bright light emanating from the surface of the Mars, stirring a tsunami of online debates and conspiracy mongering.

NASA has come up with their own explanation, three of them actually, and to many these explanations make perfect sense. Considering the fact that the technology onboard Curiosity is not as freely controllable as it is in our hands, anomalies are bound to appear and the only logical approach would be to study such anomalies rather than blindly speculating about aliens and what not.

According to NASA’s scientists at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, there is no consistency in the light captured by the rover. The light appears in only one frame of the image, while other images taken seconds after the controversial image do not contain any beam of light.

Justin Maki who is NASA’s imaging expert monitoring the photographs taken by Curiosity said that there are a number of possibilities that could easily explain this anomaly. He said that one must not forget the fact that there is a massive star out there called ‘the sun’ and it throws light at nearly all the planetary objects in the solar system, some of that light is bound to reflect back from the surface and it could create tons of such beaming light phenomena. Another possible explanation according to Maki could be that light entered into the lenses mounted on Curiosity through a narrow vent creating an illusion of beaming light. Maki says that it has happened in the past when Curiosity lenses struggle to let light through due to their default low light settings to capture as much details of Mars’ surface as possible. In an email explaining the controversial light photograph, Justin Maki put forward his explanations and stated that it is a normal occurrence and has nothing to do with alien bases on Mars. ()

After the image from the curiosity started surfacing the social media, a number of ‘super-active’ conspiracy theorists jumped on the band-wagon of Alien propaganda and littered their web platforms with all sorts of mind boggling theories about Mars. Experts suggest that such ill informed analysis regarding the space explorations serve no real purpose, and hinders the common people understanding of the recent scientific discoveries.