I didn't check the scanner. It was just a pearl, nothing mission mandatory, so I "checked" terrain with c4 and moved on.
Found a video of it in effect. The light from the pearl as it zooms by makes it look like it's several clips, but it's one long clip of the pearl going past me, and returning to the top of the slope, only to roll back down again. https://twitter.com/JoinDeepRock/status/1157030946765529100?s=20