Rope-like object found on Mars. What’s this?

At the moment, Mars is the most studied planet by people – several research vehicles are working on it at once. Many of them are equipped with cameras, and the Perseverance rover is no exception. Recently, an object came into view of one of his optical instruments, which very much resembles a rope or fishing line from a fishing rod. This became an occasion for jokes – for example, the authors of Science Alert noted that liquid water clearly also flowed in a place where fishing once existed.

Some people may well have assumed that the found object is a dried root of a Martian plant, which would be a big sensation, because we have not yet found alien vegetation. But all this is just speculation, and one of them is the most plausible.

Mysterious objects on Mars

Throughout the history of observations, scientists and enthusiasts have found many mysterious objects in photographs of Mars. The first such discovery was made back in 1976, when the Viking 1 spacecraft sent a snapshot of the Martian region of Cydonia. In the photograph taken, you can see something that vaguely resembles a human face. This was the reason for the emergence of theories that once upon a time intelligent beings lived on Mars, and the huge figure is part of an ancient statue.

Mysterious face on Mars

It goes without saying that this is not a statue. In 2001, the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter took a higher resolution photograph of the surface of Cydonia. It turned out that the mysterious figure is an ordinary hill – the outlines of the eyes, nose and mouth turned out to be just a play of light and shadow. In addition, the photo was heavily distorted by the weak Viking-1 camera.

High-quality photo of a face on Mars

Piece of rope found on Mars

Recently, something that strongly resembles a piece of rope got into the frame of one of the photos from the Perseverance rover. The object lay directly under the body of the device. In the main image of the article, it looks large, but in the picture below you can see that it is very small – even the stones lying nearby are larger than it.

According to experts, this is definitely not an ancient artifact of Martian fishermen and not the root of an extraterrestrial plant. This rope is most likely part of the parachute used to soft-land the rover in 2021. It probably ended up under the apparatus under the influence of the wind, because in the new pictures it is no longer visible – probably rolled somewhere to the side.

As you can see, the piece of rope is very small.

What does the Perseverance rover do?

To date, the most powerful rover Perseverance is engaged in its most important task – it extracts samples of Martian soil ( not without problems ). When the required amount is collected, the material will be sent to Earth for study using laboratory instruments. It is hoped that scientists will be able to find traces of living beings, plants and other signs of existing (or existing!) Life on Mars.

In the photo with a piece of rope, you can see that the manipulator of the NASA spacecraft is touching the rock – most likely, it just took a new sample. In addition to the drill, the manipulator has many sensors, instruments and cameras.

Mars rover Perseverance extracts soil samples

Debris on Mars

Previously, the Martian helicopter Ingenuity found metal debris and a huge piece of cloth on Mars. All this debris a year ago also participated in the soft landing of the Perseverance rover. After that, the rover itself photographed a silvery object, which was sandwiched between two large stones. According to scientists, this is a fragment of the thermal shell that protected the rover during the descent from high temperatures.

Debris on the surface of Mars

I talked about all these findings in an article about how humanity has already begun to fill Mars with piles of garbage. However, scientists do not see anything wrong with this – for example, littering is calmly taken by Red Planet image processing specialist Stuart Atkinson (Stuart Atkinson).

According to him, somewhere in a hundred years a settlement of people can be created on the planet, and they will purposefully look for these fragments to be sent to museums. Someday this garbage will become as valuable an artifact as ancient figurines are for modern people.