But if a resurfaced image taken by a Nasa rover is anything to go by, the aliens that call Mars home are land-walking ‘jellyfish’. Maybe.

The photo was taken by Curiosity in August 2023, 3,924 Martian days, or Sols, into the extraterrestrial explorer’s time exploring the red planet.

The black-and-white panorama shows the 96-mile-wide Gale Crater, an ancient meteor impact crater, with a black, spindly object on the slopes.

Curiosity, a 1,000kg mobile laboratory sent to analyse Martian soil and rocks, frequently took photographs as it trundled around.

Strangely, the dark object was not there in a photograph taken less than 10 seconds before. It was also the final photo taken that day.

The image caption provides no further information beyond saying the shot was taken by the Right Navigation Camera.

Kari Sivertzen, who has for months been rummaging through images taken by Curiosity, flagged the image on the social media platform X last week.

Users weren’t entirely sure what to make of the object, with Sivertzen insisting it wasn’t Ingenuity, a tiny helicopter that stands on spindly legs.

Ingenuity acted as a scout for the life-seeking probe, Perseverance, which was about 2,300 miles away in the Jezero Crater.

Jean Ward, a Mars researcher, said the ‘tripod object’ could be a ‘potential UFO’, or Unidentified Flying Object.

‘As always, until we get boots on the ground to see these anomalies up close, I can only speculate as to what these objects might be,’ he said.

Another user added: ‘What on Mars is that?!’

While a third user commented: ‘First image of a jellyfish UFO [on] Mars. Great.’

After all, many, many things have been spotted on Mars that, at first glance, shouldn’t be there. From egg-shaped holes and ‘spiders‘ to rolling hills that resemble the ruins of a city and a ‘crowned face’.

But sceptics said that, like those examples above, this tripod-shaped object could simply be a trick of the light or something our human brains are trying to make sense of too creatively.

Read More: Bizarre ‘jellyfish spotted on Mars’ in resurfaced NASA images