An amazing V-shaped dune field on Mars, which looks uncannily like the Starfleet logo from the hit TV show Star Trek, has been revealed by NASA today, UK MailOnline reported.
Spotted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the image was acquired by the HiRISE camera aboard the Orbiter on Dec. 30, 2013.
"In this image of a dune field in a large crater near Mawrth Vallis, some of the dunes appear to be in formation," NASA said.
Likening the formation to flying birds, the odd shapes were formed by a combination of weather and terrain, NASA said.
"Migratory birds and military aircraft-like during World War II-often fly in a V-shaped formation,' it said.
'The 'V' formation greatly boosts the efficiency and range of flying birds, because all except the first fly in the upward motion of air--called upwash--from the wingtip vortices of the bird ahead."
"For dune fields, the spacing of individual dunes is a function of sand supply, wind speed, and topography," NASA said.
According to UK MailOnline, this find isn't Star Trek's first brush with the NASA's red planet projects.
Earlier this year, actor William Shatner joined growing calls for NASA to investigate the bizarre "jelly doughnut" shaped rock on the Martian surface.
Shatner asked NASA about the strange Mars rock found by Opportunity via Twitter during a press conference on the Opportunity rover's latest discoveries - asking mission controllers if they had ruled out "Martian rock throwers," UK MailOnline reported.
Mission controllers responded by calling Shatner's theory "unlikely."
"We've got another question from Twitter, this one from William Shatner," NASA spokesman Guy Webster said, according to space.com. "He'd like to know if you've ruled out the Martian rock throwers in the case of the jelly doughnut."
Later, NASA said it had solved the mystery of a "jelly doughnut" rock that appeared on the Martian surface - and said it was just a rolling stone.
According to UK MailOnline, the white-rimmed, red-centered rock caused a stir last month when it appeared in an image the rover took on January 8th.
More recent images show the original piece of rock struck by the rover's wheel, slightly uphill from where Pinnacle Island, the name NASA gave the rock.
"Once we moved Opportunity a short distance, after inspecting Pinnacle Island, we could see directly uphill an overturned rock that has the same unusual appearance," said Opportunity Deputy Principal Investigator Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis. "We drove over it. We can see the track. That's where Pinnacle Island came from."
