The space agency interprets it as part of the ‘thermal blankets’ used to regulate the temperature during the rocket’s landing.
The sheet shows small dots everywhere
In a revelation, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has captured an image of a shiny piece of sheet that stuck to a rock on the red planet. The space agency interprets the piece of aluminum foil as part of a thermal blanket used around the rocket to regulate its temperature during landing times.
The rover’s Twitter handle showed a tweet from the team saying, “My computer has detected something unexpected: it’s a piece of a thermal blanket that they think may come from my descent stage, the jet pack. propelled by rockets that fell on me. the day of landing in 2021 “.
The team was surprised by the location of the foil, which is almost 2 km from the place of the descent. The team wonders if the piece landed there after the rover went down or if it was blown in by some Martian winds. The image on the slide shows black dots everywhere and is said to have been captured by the rover’s Mastcam-Z camera on June 13th.
The Perseverance Mars rover was launched in 2020 (July 30) as part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission and landed on the planet in 2021 (February 18). The rover is currently monitoring an ancient region of the river delta inside the Jezero crater on the planet. The main function of the rover is to look for signs of life and collect samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) for a possible return to Earth. The space agency hopes the rover will find crucial evidence of microbial life on the red planet.
The Rover has a pair of Mastcam-Z cameras with zoom in on the head that create high-resolution color 3D panoramas of the planet’s landscape. In addition, on its mast is the SuperCam, which can study the chemistry of rocks and sediments, and has its own microphone to help scientists better understand it. According to the space agency, the Perseverance rover is the most sophisticated robotic geologist ever created.
According to experts, the rover will investigate the geology of the crater and characterize the region’s past climate, including the presence of microbial life and water. This project will directly contribute to the Mars Sample Return campaign, which is planned by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) to allow Earth scientists to study samples collected by the rover.
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The Twitter handle of NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover shows a picture of the team wrapping the rover in thermal blankets.
The publication said, “Think of them as spaceship seamstresses. They work with sewing machines and other tools to put these unique materials together.”