NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover found something interesting tucked into a small boulder on its way through the beautiful Jezero Crater. Upon closer inspection, the robot’s team saw that it was not a sign of extraterrestrial life. In fact, it is just a regular piece of human trash, which came from NASA.
“My team has spotted something unexpected,” tweeted the rover, or at least its longsuffering social media manager. “It’s a piece of a thermal blanket that they think may have come from my descent stage, the rocket-powered jet pack that set me down on landing day back in 2021.”
Space debris has increasingly shown to be a threat to astronauts, the Earth, and, increasingly, the other pristine, human-less celestial bodies in our solar system. It is now becoming an appalling concern for the off-planet industries in recent years.
Nevertheless, it was shocking to see litter around Red Planet. The robot page thought openly through Twitter: “My descent stage crashed about 2 km away. Did this piece land here after that, or was it blown here by the wind?”
There is yet to be a recycling process installed in space and on Mars.
