NASA's Ingenuity helicopter captured a stunning otherworldly photograph of the space agency's Perseverance rover landing capsule on Mars that arrived on the red planet in February 2021.
The wreckage looks to resemble the remains of a flying saucer that crashed on the surface of the red planet. However, it did not come from aliens but from a previous mission conducted by humans on Mars.
Otherworldly Wreckage on Mars
The component, known as a backshell, was detached in the landing of the Perseverance rover during its mission. An engineer who worked on Perseverance's parachute system, Ian Clark, commented on the images released on Wednesday. He said that there was "definitely a sci-fi element to it."
The Perseverance rover spent a year exploring the rocks of the crater it landed in before passing near its landing site while traveling to a river delta that is believed to have flowed along the western rim of the crater. The rover is accompanied by another robotic colleague, Ingenuity, that follows its path, as per the New York Times.
Ingenuity captured the wreckage at the landing site on Apr. 19 after the team was asked to try and image Perseverance's landing gear. It was meant to aid the joint NASA-European Space Agency Mars sample-return project. This aims to haul back materials that Perseverance has collected to Earth as early as 2033.
Clark noted that Perseverance made history because its landing on Mars was the best-documented so far. Cameras captured every part of the process from parachute inflation to touchdown. The engineer said that Ingenuity's images offered a different perspective that could show whether or not they reinforced the belief that the systems worked properly.
According to Space, Perseverance's conical backshell helped protect itself and Ingenuity, which was tucked in its belly, during the long journey from Earth to Mars and helped it briefly survive the scorching trip through the red planet's atmosphere. The supersonic parachute used by the duo stretched 70.5 feet and was the largest ever deployed on Mars.
NASA's Space Missions
Ingenuity's team lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, Teddy Tzanetos, said that the space agency opted to extend flight operations for such missions. He noted that every time the helicopter went airborne, it was covering new ground and offered a fresh perspective that no previous planetary mission had achieved.
The photographs could aid experts to ensure safer landings for future spacecraft, including the Mars Sample Return Lander. This machine is part of a multimission campaign that aims to bring Perseverance's samples back to our planet for intensive studies.
In the photographs, the backshell's protective coating appears to have mostly remained intact during entry into Mars' atmosphere. The capsule was believed to have struck the surface of the red planet with a speed of roughly 78 miles per hour.
Many of the 80 high-strength suspension lines that connected the backshell to the parachute were visible and also appeared to be intact. Only about a third of the hypersonic parachute could be seen in the images as the rest was covered in dust, NASA reported.
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