NASA cameras spot ‘alien’ wreckage on Mars — but it’s not what you thinkBy Ben Cost
April 28, 2022
It was a U-F-faux.
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has gone viral after snapping photos on the Red Planet of what looked like a flying saucer — but was actually landing gear from last year’s mission to Mars.
The interplanetary photo op was conducted earlier this month by the ‘copter, NASA reported. It had been dispatched by the space agency to survey debris from the Perseverance rover’s historic landing on Feb. 18, 2021.
The 10 pics show a UFO-esque conical “backshell” that protected the rover in deep space and during its fiery descent toward the Martian surface. Also visible is the resultant debris field and the aeroshell’s 70.5-foot-wide parachute — the biggest ever deployed on Mars.
“It exudes otherworldly, doesn’t it?” Dr. Ian Clark from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told the New York Times of the Martian-evoking discovery.
NASA noted that both pieces of equipment were intact, which was remarkable given the “fast-paced and stressful” nature of “entry, descent, and landing on Mars,” according to the space agency’s report, which added that landing vehicles must endure “the gravitational forces, high temperatures, and other extremes that come with entering Mars’ atmosphere at nearly 12,500 miles per hour.”
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2022/04/28/nasa-cameras-spot-alien-wreckage-on-mars-but-its-not-what-you-think/
