NASA's Perseverance rover captured this image of a strange rock on August 5, 2025. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)
NASA's Perseverance rover has discovered a curious volcanic rock on the surface of Mars that looks more like a weathered combat helmet.
In this image taken on August 5, 2025, by the rover's Mastcam-Z camera, the rock has a pointed top and a pitted, knobby texture reminiscent of armor forged centuries ago. On Earth, similar concretional textures can form through chemical weathering, mineral deposition, or even volcanic processes. Perseverance discovered a similar rock in March 2025.
It’s these spherules that intrigue scientists. “This hat-shaped rock is made up of spherules. The target name for this rock is Horneflya, and what’s special about it is not so much the hat shape (which I think is generally consistent with the pyramidal shape we often see in weathered floating blocks on the surface of Mars) but the fact that it’s made almost entirely of spherules,” David Egle, a spokesman for the Perseverance team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Space.com.
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Scientists think that in some Martian rocks, these spherules form when groundwater seeps through the pores of sedimentary rocks. But they're not sure that all of them formed this way; the Perseverance science team has a lot of work to do analyzing new samples to find answers to this mystery of Martian geology and other burning questions about the Red Planet.
The Mastcam-Z instrument, a pair of zoom-capable cameras mounted on Perseverance's neck-shaped mast, allows scientists to take high-resolution stereo images and spot unusual objects from a distance, like this sphere-covered, helmet-shaped rock.
The Martian rock resembles a 17th century Dutch “pot” helmet.
Perseverance has uncovered a growing gallery of bizarre rock shapes, from doughnut-shaped meteorites to avocado-shaped rocks. These types of images are examples of the phenomenon of pareidolia, which describes the human brain’s tendency to superimpose a familiar pattern onto random visual data — whether it’s a face in the clouds, a rabbit on the moon, or a medieval helmet on the surface of Mars.
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For now, the helmet rock remains a compelling snapshot of Martian history. Features like these help scientists piece together the history of the Red Planet’s environment, showing how wind, water, and internal processes may have shaped its landscape over billions of years.
Perseverance is currently exploring the northern rim of Jezero Crater, having successfully completed a challenging climb to the summit known as Lookout Hill late last year.
Daisy Dobrijevic. Social Links. Navigation. Channel Reference Editor, Space.com.
Daisy Dobrijevic joined Space.com in February 2022 as a staff writer. Previously, she was a staff writer for our sister publication, All About Space. Before that, Daisy completed an editorial internship at BBC Sky at Night magazine and worked at the National Space Centre in Leicester, UK, where she enjoyed communicating space science to the public. Daisy completed a PhD in Plant Physiology and an MSc in Environmental Science in 2021. She currently lives in Nottingham, UK.
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