Mysterious tracks spotted in NASA Mars photo spark theories of extraterrestrial life on the Red Planet

Another strange image has been unearthed in the NASA archives which some believe is evidence of intelligent life driving along the surface of Mars.

NASA’s Curiosity rover, which has been investigating whether Mars could have supported microbial life for the last 14 years, snapped the image just over a year ago on May 19, 2025.

It shows the dusty Martian landscape with rocky hills and distant mountains around 2.40am in Coordinated Universal Time on Earth.

However, the panorama also revealed a large and easily visible pattern in the ground which looked similar to a row of tire tracks.

One person asked: ‘Are those Curiosity’s tracks we’re seeing?’

However, others who viewed the NASA image shared on social media that the tracks from the human-made rover are completely different from the pattern seen last year.

Fueling speculation that NASA’s rover had captured proof of some mechanical device driving on Mars, another image taken just two minutes later caught the same pattern in the ground from a different angle – suggesting this was not a camera glitch or trick of the light.

In September 2025, NASA declared it had found the clearest signs of ancient microbial life on Mars in a sample collected by the Perseverance rover.

Despite the history-making revelation, both the space agency and White House have maintained that no signs of intelligent, extraterrestrial life have ever been found.

There were no other photos from May 19, 2025 publicly posted by NASA that revealed if more tracks were found or if Curiosity got closer to the strange formation to get a more detailed look.

NASA and military officials have frequently called strange and unexplainable objects in space photos ‘artifacts,’ often blaming them on unusual camera lighting or corrupted data being transmitted back to Earth.

The 2025 image was reposted on Tuesday by social media user Kari Sivertzen, a space enthusiast who regularly shares public NASA images that contain strange anomalies that cannot be easily explained. 

Sivertzen said on X: ‘Sometimes I spot things that catch my eye, and I share them here. I believe there is life on other planets, and since NASA has found potential traces of life on Mars, it’s the perfect place to look.’

While viewers were immediately drawn to the strange track marks, Sivertzen said she shared the rover’s photo to point out clues that a body of water may have existed on Mars in the distant past.

‘What I’m actually highlighting here are the depressions in the surrounding area, which look quite distinct and could be consistent with past water activity or an impact,’ Sivertzen posted.

However, the photo had some lining up Curiosity’s wheel marks to the uniform pattern seen on Mars, which appeared to show a straight line down the center of the track, with evenly spaced prints closely distributed in a straight line – just like a tire in motion.

One person replied to the X post: ‘It’s not the rover, at least what I think, since that would have left two tracks and the “pattern” doesn’t match other rover tracks.’

The X user pointed out that Curiosity has no center line in its tire tracks, and the treads also feature a jagged pattern with large square blocks between them.

This was not the first strange pattern or formation astronomy enthusiasts have spotted on the Red Planet.

Last month, Sivertzen shared another shocking photo from Curiosity appearing to show a jellyfish-like being or mechanical device moving along Mars’ Gale Crater.

The unearthed panorama from 2023 revealed a small figure in the left corner of the image that appeared to have a large black body perched atop two spindly legs.

Images taken of the same area less than a minute earlier showed no sign of the mysterious figure.

Curiosity rover has been exploring Gale Crater since 2012. The area is a huge impact crater roughly the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, with a towering mountain rising from its center.

Scientists believe this location will provide more evidence that life once existed on Mars thousands, and possibly millions, of years ago.

Like the Perseverance rover, it is using onboard instruments to study rock layers, clay deposits and climate history to look for microbial traces of life.

Skeptics have previously claimed that people see strange images in the Martian landscape because the human brain naturally attempts to recognize familiar shapes in ambiguous images, a phenomenon known as pareidolia.

It is the same psychological effect that can cause people to see faces in clouds, animals in rock formations or human-made structures across the barren Martian landscape.

Mars has produced several famous examples, most notably the so-called ‘Face on Mars,’ which was photographed by NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter in 1976.

Higher-resolution images later revealed that the apparent face was an ordinary eroded hill whose human-like appearance resulted from shadows and the relatively poor quality of the original photograph.

NASA and the Trump Administration are now planning for the first manned mission to Mars by the end of the decade.