The mission team is trying to figure out what it is and where it came from on the Red Planet.
Perseverance rover , who studies the Red Planet, collected 12 soil samples. As CNET reports, while studying these samples, the mission team noticed some strange objects stuck in the collection system.
As part of standard procedure, after collecting the samples, the rover takes close-up pictures of some of the system's components.
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“In these images, we saw two small fragments of debris – a small object on the column bit (stored in the carousel) and a small object object on a drill chuck,” said NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory project manager Art Thompson.
One such object is easy to spot in the images released by the mission team. It resembles a thin white thread, like the kind that might come off a button on a shirt.
Thompson's team is currently working to figure out what these fragments are and where they might have come from. They are likely parts of the rover itself, as well as the Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) system that helped it land on Mars in 2021.
This is not the first time strange fragments have been found on the Red Planet. Previously, Perseverance found mysterious filaments that were most likely part of the EDL that blew apart during landing.
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Remember, NASA has given the Perseverance rover the ability to independently select targets for sample collection, which should accelerate the development of science on Mars. Without direct guidance from Earth, the rover “shot” two targets with its SuperCam instrument.
