When a spacecraft screams through Mars' atmosphere at some 12,000 mph, releases a giant supersonic parachute, and ultimately abandons said parachute along with rocket-powered landing gear and a heat shield, it's inevitable that debris will scatter over the Martian landscape.
In June, NASA's Perseverance rover spotted paper-like trash caught between some rocks. And in July, the rover stumbled across what is likely a tangle of cord, perhaps from the parachute.
The internet has labeled this a "mystery object." But its origins, near where the Perseverance rover landed in 2021, aren't too mysterious. Perseverance rumbled by its parachute and other landing gear in April. NASA's car-sized robot hasn't traveled too far from its landing spot, journeying 7.3 winding miles through the Jezero Crater, a place planetary scientists think once teemed with water.
In other words, the rover is driving through a zone of landing debris.
A tangle of landing debris from the Perseverance rover's descent through Mars' atmosphere.Credit: NASA / JPL-CaltechThe NASA Perseverance rover will almost certainly find more trash as it explores the red planet. It has a packed schedule. It's currently:
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Collecting rock samples that will one day be rocketed back to Earth by a future spacecraft
Scoping terrain for the rock sample return mission to land
Lasering rocks as it seeks evidence of past primitive life on Mars
There's still no evidence, however, that life has ever existed anywhere beyond Earth. But on Mars, a dried-up river delta in the Jezero Crater may hold some compelling clues.
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