The internet was taken by storm when the image of an object resembling a flying saucer was found on the surface of Mars. But soon all the excitement was put to rest after it was revealed that the object doesn’t belong to aliens but belonged to NASA itself.
The object resembling a ‘flying saucer’ belongs to NASA. The wreckage is a component called a ‘backshell’ that was detached from the Perseverance rover during its landing on the red planet in February 2021.
Commenting on the photographs, Ian Clark, an engineer who worked on Perseverance’s parachute system said, “There’s a sci-fi element to it. It exudes otherworldly, doesn’t it?”
During the rover’s 26th flight last week, 10 pictures were captured during its 159 seconds in the air covering 1,181 feet. The images showed the backshell, or the top half of the landing capsule protecting Perseverance and Ingenuity during the plunge through the Martian atmosphere.
Eventually, the backshell got separated from the rover at an altitude of 1.3 miles and a rocket-powered system called Skycrane aided the Perseverance the rest of the way to the surface.
The backshell, resembling a flying saucer measures 15 feet in diameter, “They say a picture’s worth 1,000 words, but it’s also worth an infinite amount of engineering understanding. We use all of our best models, all of our best analysis tools” Clark said.
