The Mystery of "David's" Dome on Mars that disappeared in NASA's Photo Catalog.
- Mark Dale
- Aug 1
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 2
In 2015, David's Dome was found.
In 2015, Anomaly Hunter David Gannett made an astonishing find in
NASA's photo catalog.
Upon looking through 100s of pictures from Mars taken by the Opportunity Rover, David spotted what looks like a dome-shaped construction on the Martian surface only 100 meters away from the Rover.
The Rover was exploring Endeavor crater when it took a picture that sent shockwaves through the community of Anomaly Hunters.
At a conference at Alabama State University in 2016, David described his find on Mars as what he believed could be some sort of outpost (video below).
The anomaly was dubbed "David's Dome" and was shared worldwide on social media and several news outlets.
The debate on whether there is or was life on Mars had reached new heights, and 1000s of people started joining the "few at the time" Mars Exploration groups on Facebook, where David and other anomalyhunters share their findings from Mars, the Moon, and other planets in our solar system.
David's Dome disappeared!
Ten years later, Thomas Mikey Jensen, founder of Astro Archaeology Research Society, decided to follow up on David's Dome to find out if it was visible in satellite images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite. The coordinates were found quickly on Google Mars, where it took less than a minute to download a 649 MB picture covering the edge of Endeavor crater, linked below.
And here the mystery begins. There is no David's Dome to be seen from above at the relatively small area that the Opportunity Rover was operating in.
Was he doing his research wrong?
The following day, he contacted Neville Thompson, who is a well-known technical expert within satellite and Rover image exploration, also behind the website Nev-t-gigamacros.com
Where exploration of the Martian surface has been made easy for everyone to use and search for anomalies on Mars and the Moon.
What Neville did was, instead of looking at Satellite images from above, he looked at other images from different angles taken both before and after Opportunity's SOL 4073, which was taken on the 10th of July 2015, and that strategy paid off when he reached SOL 4119
where the camera was finally aiming at the same area again, 46 days after the first known image of David's Dome (SOL 4073), this time in color, and there is no Dome on it!
How will NASA explain that?
After realising that David's Dome is not there anymore, theories emerge: was it something that drove or flew away again, or is it NASA removing things that are too obvious and not ours?
Neither Thomas Mikey Jensen nor Neville Thompson can explain how this has happened, but one thing they can say for sure is:
It's not there anymore! So what happened here?
Below are links to NASA's Opportunity Rover images.
Interactive Mosaic Image below by Neville Thomson. Click and see if you can find David's Dome
Thomas Mikey Jensen speaking about Martian Anomalies at The Bases Seminar 2024.
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