roaming Mars It’s a lonely existence for NASA’s tenacity, but the expedition vehicle now has a traveling companion: a “pet rock” that gets stuck in one of its wheels.
Fortunately, the Mars stone won’t affect the rover’s science mission and is just a minor inconvenience, like getting a pebble stuck in your shoe.
According to the statement NASA.
The Rock periodically displays images captured by the rover’s left front hazard avoidance camera (Hazcam).
Recent footage shows that the rock continues to crumble with persistence 126 days (123 Mars) following hiking for the first time. (A Sol day, or Sol day, is only 37 minutes longer than Earth’s day.)
With perseverance, The Rock has cut just over a quarter of the rover’s mission to the Red Planet. When the rock first settled into the Wheel of Perseverance, the rover was exploring the Máaz Formation, part of the Jezero Crater that researchers believe consists of ancient lava flows.
The rock on April 19 near the remains of the Kodiak Delta. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Since then, the rover has traveled 8.5 kilometers across the Octavia E. Butler landing site, the Perseverance first landing on Mars in February 2021, and bypassing the remains of the Kodiak Delta, which once connected an ancient river and lake. .
The rover will soon be preparing to ascend one of the steep Jezero Crater slopes, whose rocky distance it may surreptitiously slip.
Related: Perseverance rover spotted from space in stunning new satellite image
When the companion stone finally falls off the rover wheel, it will likely be surrounded by rocks quite different from itself because it is likely of volcanic origin.
“We might confuse a future Mars geologist if he finds it out of place,” the mission scientist joked at a recent meeting, According to the statement.
Perseverance, or Percy, picked up several other small boulders in his right front wheel during his mission, but these all fell off within a few days or weeks.
This makes the newest rocky rider the Martian record holder for hiking, According to the statement.
But Percy isn’t the only rover on Mars to have picked up a pet stone.
In December 2004, operators of NASA’s Spirit rover — which roamed Mars between January 2004 and March 2010 — had to perform a sharp maneuver to shake a “potato-sized” rock out of its right rear because scientists feared it would cause significant damage. pity, according to NASA.
Previously, picking up unwanted rocks in other parts of the rover was a much bigger problem for tenacity.
On December 29, a pile of small pebbles fell into part of the rover’s mechanism, prompting Percy to Bursting for regarding a week. Expedition scientists eventually found a way to remove the gravel following forcing the rover to detach the drilling arm to properly image the affected area.
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This article was originally published by live sciences. Read it The original article is here.
