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Picture credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover noticed a little bit of trash on the Martian floor. The shiny litter ought to look acquainted to Perseverance, because it seems to be a bit of thermal blanket from the rover’s descent in early 2021.
The thermal blanket was used to manage temperature,s and it was on Perseverance’s rocket-powered jet pack that the rover used to manage its touchdown on Mars. Thermal blankets are essential to any profitable area mission. Thermal blankets are made utilizing a number of layers of Mylar movies with Dacron netting. The outermost layer depends upon Kapton movie or Beta material, which helps resist temperature modifications.
My crew has noticed one thing surprising: It’s a bit of a thermal blanket that they suppose could have come from my descent stage, the rocket-powered jet pack that set me down on touchdown day again in 2021. pic.twitter.com/O4rIaEABLu
— NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) June 15, 2022
The piece of thermal blanket is not the primary detritus that Perseverance has placed on Mars. In April, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter photographed the wreckage from Perseverance’s profitable touchdown on Mars. The pictures of the wreckage will assist NASA’s engineers with future missions.
Right here’s a part of the crew at JPL that wrapped me up in thermal blankets. Consider them as spacecraft dressmakers. They work with stitching machines and different instruments to piece collectively these distinctive supplies.
Extra on that right here: https://t.co/CNkUheYFnQ pic.twitter.com/PcMeow3FyO
— NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) June 15, 2022
Whereas it is clear why the wreckage from the touchdown mission is on the Martian floor, it isn’t apparent why a bit of thermal blanket was noticed, at the very least not within the space it was noticed. NASA’s Perseverance crew writes, ‘It is a shock discovering this right here: My descent stage crashed about 2 km away. Did this piece land right here after that, or was it blown right here by the wind?’
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