Claims of UFO sightings on Mars have recently made headlines and UFO fans have accused NASA of allegedly concealing the truth about the Red Planet. But a NASA scientist who works on the Mars rover project believed that the people who find such sightings have pareidolia, a psychological phenomenon wherein one's brain imagines a familiar pattern when there is none.

Recent NASA images of the Martian landscape have been pretty interesting for UFO sighting enthusiasts, who claimed to have found alien-like oddities on Mars. According to RT.com, the photos taken by the Curiosity Rover, which included a levitating sphere, space crab and Star Destroyer have ignited lively debates among alien hunters after discovering several strange objects that looked like UFOs. They even accused NASA of hiding evidence of alien life from the public.

As conspiracy theorists continued to study the Curiosity Rover images, more strange discoveries have emerged and comments became creepier. UFO hunters claimed that they found the following: a crab-like creature, an alien woman who have been attentively watching the rover, a Star Destroyer stationed on the Red Planet, a lizard-like figure roaming the Martian grounds, a creature with a single long eye, two long bent arms and a thin body and a face of a person wearing a huge hat carved into Martian rock.

NASA scientist Aswhin Vasavada, who works on the Mars rover project, however, believed that the people who found the alleged UFO sightings have pareidolia, which is a psychological phenomenon that causes some people to see or hear a vague or random image or sound as something significant, as Live Science defined. Pareidolia is also a form of apophenia, which is when people see patterns or connections in random, unconnected data.

Vasavada also explained why so many people see strange objects on Mars and emphasized that NASA scientists are not trying to hide evidence of alien life or UFO sightings from the general public, Daily Mail noted.

"There is no group that would be happier to see such a thing than the 500 scientists around the world who work on this Curiosity rover," Vasavada told CNN. "So far we haven't seen anything that is so obvious that it would be similar to what these claims are."

Meanwhile, it is apparent that many people have profound interest in UFOs and UFO sightings, where they observe every intricate detail in the images. While some may find their discoveries interesting, there is no credibility since NASA has not proven the existence of such objects, International Business Times reported.

Until proven by NASA and other credible space agencies, claims of UFO sightings on Mars will be regarded as mere "illusions."