On the Red Planet, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter captured images of what looked like a flying saucer – but was actually landing gear from last year’s mission to Mars.
NASA reported that the interplanetary imaging process was conducted earlier this month by the helicopter, and was sent by the space agency to survey debris from the historic landing of the Perseverance Rover on February 18, 2021.
The 10 images show the cone-shaped “back shell” of a UFO protecting the deep-space rover during its fiery descent toward the Martian surface, as well as the resulting debris field and the 70.5-foot-wide Aeroshell parachute – the largest ever deployed on Mars.
“It exudes another world,” Dr. Ian Clark of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory told the New York Times of the Mars discovery.
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NASA noted that both pieces of equipment were intact, which is remarkable given the “rapid and cumbersome” nature of “entry, descent and landing on Mars,” according to the space agency’s report, which added that the landers must withstand “gravitational forces, temperatures, altitude, and other extreme conditions that come with entering the Martian atmosphere at 12,500 mph,” however, “several weeks of analysis” are still needed before the team can reach a conclusive verdict on the debris, NASA said.