The Bowling Pin on Mars

"It's the Backshell/Parachute, which is about 300m away and in the right direction."

Photo of lander(5.5m span across solar arrays), heatshield (200m away) and backshell/parachute (350m away)
www.nasa.gov...

Photo Mosaic from lander - anomaly is at lower right distance)
www.nasa.gov...

" MarkDArchitect@aol.com

I agree that the image is almost certainly a part of the chute assembly and is draped over a slight rise in the topography, to create the illusion of an upright object.

In the mission desdign parameters, NASA must have taken care to make sure that this chute assembly landed far away from the craft, because otherwise, perhaps one of the interannual global dust storms, with windspeeds that can reach 400 MPH and a duration of months, could send the chute into the craft and entagle it with disastorus results. "