Searching the Red Planet’s surface for historic indications of ancient life that may have once populated the planet is being done by NASA’s Perseverance rover.

Perseverance has experienced many intriguing and surprising things along her journeys, and now NASA researchers can add another occurrence to their list of “unexpected” occurrences as Perseverance has discovered a piece of rubbish. According to NASA, who posted on Perseverance’s official Twitter account, the rover found the debris wedged within a sharp rock and was subsequently able to determine that it is a thermal blanket that was intended to shield the rover from Mars’ hostile atmosphere as it descended to the surface.

As the descent stage crashed around 1.24 miles from where the thermal blanket was found, the Twitter account writes that “it’s a surprise discovering this here.” It is currently being questioned as to whether the thermal material fell here or was carried there by a martian wind. Perseverance will now be instructed to return to its primary objective of investigating the Jezero Crater after having fun finding some long-lost landing gear.

Source: us3.c93network.com