Life for Perseverance, the brave rover that currently travels the Red Planet about 132 million miles from Earth, is quite lonely. From the desolate, dusty landscape of Jezero Crater to the Martian winds, life on Mars is not for the faint of heart, or at least for the extroverted. So despite being a robot on a scientific research mission, researchers on NASA’s Perseverance mission team were recently surprised to find that Perseverance had accidentally adopted a pet rock.
It’s unclear if Perseverance chose the rock or the rock chose Perseverance, but scientists say the rock found a cozy home on the rover’s left front wheel, at which point it began to cling to it. According to a NASA press release on the rock, the rock has been there since early February and has traveled more than 5.3 miles around Mars; Perseverance itself has traveled a total of 7.3 miles since it landed on Mars in February 2021. Fortunately, the rock has not caused any damage to Perseverance, although it has certainly lived up to its owner while perseveres clinging to the rover after so many miles.
Rock stuck to the shoe of the Perseverance rover (NASA / JPL-Caltech)
This is not the first time a rover has adopted a rock, or rather a rock has chosen a rover. Nearly 18 years ago, a potato-sized rock clung to the right wheel of the Spirit rover, which operated on the surface of Mars from 2004 to 2010. Mission operators eventually had to evacuate the remote intruder. The Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, saw rocks periodically lodged on its right front wheel. However, scientists say that these types of rover-rock relationships usually last only a few weeks, not months.
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Since landing on Mars in February 2021, Perseverance has amassed an impressive list of firsts. For example, the rover’s combined mission marked the first time a helicopter was flown to another planet. Perseverance also managed to extract oxygen from the atmosphere of carbon dioxide from the Red Planet, a method that could one day be used to provide oxygen to astronauts on Mars. And perhaps most importantly, Perseverance successfully collected and stored soil and rock samples that would eventually become the first Martian rocks to return to Earth for scientific study. And now it has also had a pet rock for the longest period of time of any rover – almost four months and counting. Is there anything that perseverance can’t do?
In other Perseverance news, an article published in Science Advances detailed Perseverance’s observations of hundreds of dust devils and his famous video of gusts of wind raising a massive cloud of Martian dust. Scientists say Perseverance’s observations of these meteorological phenomena, which were made during the first 216 Martian days of their adventure, could help predict dust storms on Mars in the future.
Related: The strange geology of Mars bothers scientists
“Jezero crater may be one of the most active sources of dust on the planet,” said Manuel de la Torre Juarez, deputy chief researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, in a press release. “Everything we learn about dust will be useful for future missions.”
The study’s authors found that at least four eddies pass through Perseverance on a typical Martian day, making Perseverance’s rock friend’s resistance even more remarkable and impressive.
Is the end of the rock journey in sight? Scientists suspect that the rock may fall during a future ascent to the edge of the crater due to gravity. And if it does, it will land in an area with rocks very different from itself. As Eleni Ravanis, a collaborating student at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, explained in a press release on the rock, a future Mars geologist would be perplexed by the location of the rock.
“So, if you’re a Martian geologist of the future reading this, maybe a Martian undergraduate student in charge of mapping the historic site of Jezero Crater: pay attention,” Ravanis wrote. “If you’ve found a rock that looks out of place, maybe you’re just looking at Perseverance’s old pet rock.”
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