NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has captured an unexpected image, that of a shiny piece of foil stuck on a rock on the red planet. The piece of foil is part of a thermal blanket that may have come from the descent stage of the rocket that landed the rover and the Ingenuity Mars helicopter on the planet.
But what is interesting is that the descent stage crashed about 2 kilometers away. So scientists aren’t sure whether the object landed there during the descent or if it was blown there by the Martian winds.
My team has spotted something unexpected: It’s a piece of a thermal blanket that they think may have come from my descent stage, the rocket-powered jetpack that set me down on landing day back in 2021, tweeted the Perseverance rover team on June 15. In the image clicked by the rover’s left camera on June 13, a piece of foil with dots across it is clearly visible. Rover’s social media team also tweeted about the people who make these blankets, saying, “Think of them as spacecraft dressmakers. They work with sewing machines and other tools to piece together these unique materials.”
In the pictures shared by NASA, the shiny litter can be seen stuck between rocks on the Red Planet. Sharing a close-up photo of the debris, NASA wrote that it was a surprise find in the region. The Perseverance rover landed on Mars in February 2021 landed facilitated that landing.
That shiny bit of foil is part of a thermal blanket – a material used to control temperatures. It’s a surprise finding this here: My descent stage crashed about 2 km away. Did this piece land here after that, or was it blown here by the wind?
Andrew Good, a NASA (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) spokesperson, told CNET that the piece is definitely from a thermal blanket. But Good added that it is not definite which part of the spacecraft it came from. These blankets help regulate temperature during the crucial entry, descent and landing process, which is also known as the “seven minutes of terror.”
The rover is currently observing an ancient river delta region inside the Crater on the planet, hoping to find evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars. This makes the spot with a history of water present on a good location to investigate and collect rock samples. NASA plans to return these samples back to Earth so that they can be studied better. The American space agency has partnered with the European Space Agency to form a 16-member Mars Sample Return Campaign Science group, which will build the roadmap for this effort.
Did this piece land here after that, or was it blown here by the wind? Perseverance team is inquiring. The team also released images of the JPL team that built the rover and wrapped it up in thermal blankets.
The SUV-sized rover, which has been on Mars since April 2021, had recently observed the winds on the planet using its cameras and a suite of sensors belonging to the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDIA). The cameras picked up the wind gusts on three occasions that lifted large dust clouds, the biggest one spread over a massive area covering 4 square kilometers
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