Perseverance Mars rover photographs its own landing debris

There is a type of "tumbleweed" on Mars.

The tumbleweeds are pieces of debris from the Perseverance rover. Many of the remnants have been photographed so that engineers can look at them.

A number of hardware elements slowed the craft's speed when it first entered the atmosphere of Mars and was gently placed on the surface. In seven minutes, everything happened.

In this video, you can see the nail-biting landing stages of NASA's Perseverance rover.

The parachute, backshell, heat shield, and sky crane were all thrown out of the Perseverance rover so that they wouldn't damage it.

Over the past year and a half, the Perseverance team has seen and cataloged several pieces of suspected EDL debris. On April 16, 2022, a bright object was spotted in one of Perseverance's panoramic Mast cam-Z photos. The material was called bright material. "No one knew what it was at the time, but perhaps the rover would take a closer look as it climbed up onto the Delta in the coming weeks."

It was several months later that Perseverance made it to that place in the Delta. The sky crane, made of either Perforated Aluminized Kapton or Mylar, is believed to have photographed a piece of multi-layer insulation from the sky. A snapshot of a ball of string-like material was caught by the rover. The operations team believes that it could be Dacron.

The crash zones of Perseverance's EDL hardware are close to Hogwallow Flats. NASA says thatHogwallow Flats appears to be a natural collecting point for wind blown EDL debris.

Ingenuity got up close and personal with some of the EDL debris. Ingenuity flew over the crash site of Perseverance to take high-resolution images of the debris.

landings on the Red Planet are often violent, and such fields of debris are not uncommon. The Opportunity and Curiosity rovers have taken pictures of what is believed to be their own debris.

As we continue to plant rovers on the planet, researchers will need to consider the effects of space junk. Engineers designing EDL hardware for future missions will need to consider the impact of their designs on both Mars and on the mission requirements.

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