Speculation took over social networks for days after a photograph of the Perseverance Rover that showed a kind of “spaghetti” on the surface of Mars, generating the most absurd theories. And NASA just this Monday, August 1, gave a Official version about the origin of this space noodle.
The culprit: the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) hardware.
“Some of the EDL hardware broke into smaller pieces when it hit the surface. These pieces of EDL debris have been seen in images from the Hogwallow Flats region, a location about 2 km northwest of the EDL hardware crash zones. As of Sol 508 (July 24, 2022), the operations team has cataloged approximately half a dozen pieces of suspected EDL debris in this area. Some of this EDL debris is actively blowing in the wind. So far we have seen brilliant pieces of thermal blanket material, Dacron netting material that is also used in thermal blankets, and a rope-like material that we conclude is a likely piece of shredded Dacron nettingNASA emphatically stated.
NASA adds, “An object that appeared as a rope-like ball of knotted material blew under the front of the rover (Sol 495, Front Hazcam image from July 11, 2022, below). Before the rope could be imaged by the higher-resolution Mastcam-Z cameras, the rope was blown away by the wind (second image, bottom). The hardware teams suspect this is another piece of Dacron netting, based on the grid mesh pattern of2×2mm2 observed. They noted that this particular piece of net appears to have undergone significant unraveling/shredding, suggesting it was subjected to strong forces.”
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