NASA’s Perseverance rover has discovered some strange and intriguing Martian terrain. The rover has found a balancing boulder and snake-head rock on a butte. Buttes are tall, flat-topped, steep-sided towers of rock created by gradual wear of earth caused by the elements.
The butte seems to be a part of an ancient river delta that probably existed within the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater. Perseverance Mars Rover and its companion, the Ingenuity helicopter landed here on February 21.
Perseverance discovers ‘shiny’ item
The Perseverance Mars Rover has also made another piece of unexpected discovery on Mars. The Rover spotted a very ‘shiny’ item and sent back pictures of the discovery. The metal like object raised curiosity among scientists and followers, some of whom speculated that the ‘shiny’ metal object could be from ‘alien’ life forms.
But experts have rebutted the speculation and said that the ‘shiny’ metal object was NASA Materiel. They say that the object could be part of a ‘thermal blanket’ belonging to NASA and is likely from a rocket powered jet pack.
A close inspection shows tiny dots on the object, which is normal for a thermal blanket. A representative for Nasa said they’re certain it’s part of a thermal blanket but do not know from which part of the spacecraft.
Andrew Good from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) offered an explanation saying that, “Less definite is which part of the spacecraft it came from – the team thinks the descent stage is a good possibility – or how exactly it got here.”
“Descent stage crashed two kilometres away; whether it landed here after that crash or was blown by the wind isn’t something we know,” said the NASA engineer.
Curiosity discovers finger-like rocks
Meanwhile NASA’s Curiosity rover recently discovered finger-like rocks while traversing over the desert landscape and took some really good photographs with the vehicle’s Mast Camera. Curiosity discovered the rocks on Mount Sharp. The rover has been climbing the 3-mile-tall Martian Mountain for about eight years now.
