This story is part of Welcome to Mars, our series exploring the red planet.
Last month I had a blast investigating a tangle of oddities spotted by the Perseverance rover on Mars. It looked a bit like spaghetti or some kind of string. NASA JPL imager scientist Justin Mackie has already chimed in on what the object might be and how it got there. I was on the right track when I thought it was debris from the rover’s landing system.
The mysterious object appeared in an image from a rover camera on July 12, but a later image from July 16 showed it had disappeared from its spot on the sandy ground.
Perseverance had a dramatic arrival at Jezero Crater in February 2021. The EDL – Entry, Descent and Landing – system placed it carefully on the surface and then escaped to crash into a safe location where it would not damage a rover. The EDL, as expected, had a hard landing, scattering debris over a wide area.
Some of that debris has photobombed the rover’s images, with NASA saying the operations team has recorded about half a dozen suspected debris in an area called Hogwallow Flats. It’s in a fascinating area of a river delta where the rover is collecting rock samples. Notably, Percy spotted a shiny piece of foil in June, which turned out to be from an EDL thermal blanket.
As for the string-like object, NASA said it was likely a piece of shredded dacron mesh. The material – a type of polyester fiber – is used in thermal blankets that help regulate equipment temperatures during the hot and spicy process of landing on Mars. The team said they found that “this particular piece of web appears to have suffered significant unraveling/tearing, suggesting that it has been subjected to strong forces.”
What is impressive is how far some of the debris has traveled. The EDL crashed about 1.24 miles (2 kilometers) from where the rover was exploring. NASA suggested that the crash may have sent material into the air, but wind is the more likely culprit in carrying the debris that distance.
Mars is known to be windy, and the disappearance of the noodle-like object indicates that it is light enough to be pushed around by strong breezes in the crater.
The piece of shredded dacron mesh appeared to be blown away by the wind in these before and after views from July 2022.
NASA/JPL-Caltech; red circle by Amanda Kooser/CNET
As much fun as it is to see unexpected objects entering the Martian landscape in the rover’s images, there are some modest concerns about the debris that is collecting on the Hogwallow Flats. “Members of the Perseverance team are reviewing images of the debris, checking whether the material could be a potential source of contamination for sample tubes from the area,” NASA said.
For now, NASA isn’t worried. The rover team monitors the observed debris and looks to make sure that none of it becomes entangled in the rover itself.
There may not be any noodles on Mars (yet), but at least we can continue to play an exciting game of debris discovery as Percy continues to explore Hogwallow Flats.
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