NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Spacecraft observed a strange circular formation located in the planet’s Athabasca region.

The mysterious formation takes the shape of a giant circular cookie, and is one of the many mysterious landforms found by the Mars Orbiter Spacecraft. The circular formation is nearly 1.2 miles wide, and is surrounded by a “sea” of smooth-looking lava flows. Therefore, the scientists feel that the mysterious formation must be some sort of volcanic structure.

According to a statement released by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology the strange circular formation might have been a mound of ice and perhaps lava might have intruded underneath this mound and pushed it up from beneath. The ice might have evaporated by the by the heat of the lava.

The particular image was captured by HiRISE, one of the six instruments on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

This isn’t the first image that baffled the scientists; Mars is full of interesting land features that continue to puzzle NASA.

There is another image captured by the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that shows dunes and ripples in the sand. Experts speculate, but are uncertain, that the dunes are composed of basaltic sand. This would be sand that comes from volcanic rock, which makes them darker than the surrounding sand ripples.

The scientists are hoping that close inspection of images captured by the HiRISE image, will provide some clues regarding their formation.”