An image of Perseverance’s “pet rock” attached to the rover’s left front wheel taken on May 26 with the rover’s left front Hazcam. (Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech) (opens in a new tab)
Roaming Mars is a solitary existence for NASA’s perseverance, but the exploratory rover now has a traveling companion: a “pet rock” that clung to one of its wheels. Fortunately, the Martian stone will not affect the rover’s scientific mission and is only a minor inconvenience, such as having a pebble attached to the shoe.
Perseverance’s left front wheel accidentally caught the pet’s rock on Feb. 4, or Sun 341, the 341st Martian day of the Martian year, according to a statement from NASA (opens in a new tab). The rock has periodically bombarded images taken by the Rover’s front-facing hazard avoidance camera (Hazcam). Recent images show that the rock is still falling along with perseverance 126 days (123 suns) after it was first stuck. (A single day, or Martian day, is only 37 minutes longer than a terrestrial day.)
The rock has been hitchhiking with Perseverance for just over a quarter of the rover’s mission to the Red Planet. When the rock first became home to the Perseverance wheel, the rover was exploring the Máaz Formation, a section of Jezero Crater that researchers suspect is made of ancient lava flows. Since then, the rover has traveled 5.3 miles (8.5 kilometers) through the Octavia E. Butler landing site, where Perseverance first landed on Mars in February 2021, and has passed through remnants of the Kodiak Delta, which once connected an ancient river and lake. The rover will soon be preparing for the ascent of one of the steep slopes of the Jezero crater, which may dislodge its stony polys.
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When pet rock eventually falls off the rover’s wheel, it is likely to be surrounded by very different rocks from itself because it is likely to be of volcanic origin. “We could confuse a future Mars geologist who finds him out of place,” a mission scientist joked at a recent meeting, according to the statement.
Perseverance, or Percy, has picked up several other small rocks on its right front wheel during its mission, but they have all fallen in a few days or weeks. This makes the newest pebble passenger a Martian hitchhiking record, according to the statement.
The pet rock photobomb takes one of the wide photos of the Kodiak Delta rover on April 19th. (Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech) (opens in a new tab)
But Percy isn’t the only rover on Mars to grab a pet rock. In December 2004, operators of NASA’s Spirit rover, which roamed Mars between January 2004 and March 2010, had to make a sharp turn to shake a “potato-sized” rock. its right rear wheel because scientists feared it would cause a significant turn. damage, seconds NASA (opens in a new tab).
Previously, picking up unwanted rocks elsewhere in the rover has been a much more serious problem for Perseverance. On December 29, a pile of small pebbles fell apart from the rover’s machinery, causing Percy closed for almost a week. Mission scientists eventually found a way to remove the pebbles after forcing the rover to separate the drill arm to properly photograph the affected area.
Originally published in Live Science.