UNITED STATES: A strange ‘string-like’ object was photographed by Perseverance on July 12, the 495th day of the rover’s ongoing mission to investigate the red planet. It was snuggled in the sand between several plain Martian boulders.
The nature of the object remains unknown. On closer inspection, it looks to be a bundle of string, which raises the question of how it got there.
As a result of a weekly public poll, the picture of the object ascended to become Perseverance’s Image of the Week.
According to the reports, the object is likely a piece of debris ejected by Perseverance probably during its parachute-assisted landing manoeuvre back in February 2021.
Interestingly, a similar incident has happened before.
Perseverance discovered the parachute it used to touch down on Mars back in April of this year. A glossy piece of foil that had served as Perseverance’s thermal blanket throughout its descent was also found by the rover in June.
At the moment, the rover’s official Twitter account stated, “It’s a surprise finding this here.” “I crashed my descending stage approximately two kilometres away (1.2 miles). After that, did this piece fall here, or did the wind carry it?”
Perseverance and its older robotic coworker Curiosity are frequently eager to draw attention from the public when they shoot mysterious Martian photographs.
A gateway in a Martian rock and another image depicting a humanoid shape lying down caused a lot of discussions earlier this year. Regarding the latter, NASA scientist Mitch Schulte stated to Newsweek that Mars is believed to be utterly unfriendly to life as we currently understand it.
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