Beautiful NASA satellite image of the mysterious giant man of South Australia

NASA Earth Observatory's Lauren Dauphin captured this lovely portrait of the Marree Man, a 2.2 mile (3.5 kilometer) tall illustration of a person etched into a South Australian plateau, southeast of Lake Eyre. A pilot first spotted Marree Man in 1998 but to this day nobody knows for sure who created the geoglyph.

While an Alice Springs artist reportedly confessed on his deathbed that he is the artist behind the geoglyph, there are other clues suggesting an American origin. Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith has offered a $5000 reward to anyone who can definitively solve the mystery of the Marree Man.

From NASA:

In August 2016, local business owners, concerned about the loss of what had become a tourist draw, decided to restore the fading geoglyph. With accurate GPS coordinates for the original in hand, they used a construction grader to redraw Marree Man over a period of five days.

The restoration team thinks the updated geoglyph will last longer than the original because they created wind grooves, designed to trap water and encourage the growth of vegetation. Over time, they hope vegetation will turn the lines green. The OLI acquired this image of the feature on June 22, 2019.