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NASA identified the strange spaghetti pile found on Martian surface [1]
['David Pescovitz']
Date: 2022-08-04
Remember the mysterious mound of strange spaghetti spotted in an image captured by the Mars Perseverance rover? NASA confirmed that it's just more space litter from Perseverance's touchdown on the Red Planet's surface. Just like the shiny piece of thermal blanket seen below that previously sparked people's curiosity, the noodly material came from the rovers's "entry, descent, and landing (EDL)" hardware. From NASA:
Some of the EDL hardware broke into smaller pieces when it impacted the surface. These pieces of EDL debris have been spotted in images of the Hogwallow Flats region, a location roughly 2 km to the northwest of the EDL hardware crash zones. As of Sol 508 (July 24, 2022), the operations team has catalogued roughly half a dozen pieces of suspected EDL debris in this area. Some of these EDL debris are actively blowing around in the wind. So far, we've seen shiny pieces of thermal blanket material, Dacron netting material that is also used in thermal blankets, and a stringlike material that we conclude to be a likely piece of shredded Dacron netting.
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