A South African researcher discovered what appears to be an image of a crashed flying saucer on the surface of Mars, according to re-analyzed NASA footage from 2006.
Jean Ward, an anomaly hunter, was searching through NASA images for noteworthy aberrations when he discovered the image taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Despite the image being 15 years old, Ward’s discovery of what appears to be the flying saucer is not.
The image comes from the bottom of Candor Chasma, which is a large canyon in the Valles Marineris system on Mars. The canyon is referred to as “The Grand Canyon of Mars,” and spans the equivalent of the U.S. It is the largest known canyon in the solar system.
This footage from NASA captures the canyon’s many swirling patterns of layers, created by sand and dust-sized particles from the forces of either wind or water.
“We see a strange trench and at the end of it, a perfect disk,” Ward says of the anomaly amid the dune-filled landscape. “Mostly covered in sand and debris, and behind it, we have random dunes,” he continued.