Is there a 'woman' living on Mars?

New York: NASA has not confirmed what actually is the 'woman-like' figure in a Mars picture that has kept UFO and alien life enthusiasts hooked for the past few weeks, CNET reported.

Over the past several weeks, UFO and alien life enthusiasts have been poring over this picture and some have reached the conclusion that it shows a humanoid figure on a rocky Martian outcropping.

Guy Webster, who handles media requests related to Mars exploration at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory was reported as saying that he was not familiar with the Martian woman his team had "discovered".

But, he added, he fields requests almost every day involving amateurs who believe they have identified signs of life in the massive archive of publicly available images sent back from Mars.

"It iss really easy to pick out rocks or other things that look like something else in pictures like this," he was quoted as saying.

Nevertheless, he has offered to look for a JPL scientist to analyse the photo to see what might actually explain the feminine figure.

Meanwhile, another photo that Curiosity took on the same day (May 31, 2015), sheds some light on the humanoid figure.

This shot was taken from a slightly different angle using the rover's right navigation camera, which allowed it to also catch a part of one of the rover's wheels in the frame.

This provides a sense of scale that the original photo of the "woman" does not, allowing us to see that if there is a Martian humanoid in the shot, she would have to be about the size of a pebble.