The Perseverance rover has unintentionally taken in a hitchhiking 'pet rock.'

Since January, the rock has been immobilized in one of the rover's wheels.

 

The rover's new traveling partner is a hitchhiking "pet rock" that got lodged in one of NASA's Perseverance rover's wheels. Roaming Mars is a lonely existence for the exploratory rover, but now it has a traveling companion. The Martian rock, which will thankfully not interfere with the rover's science mission, is simply a little nuisance, comparable to having a pebble lodged in one of your shoes.

 

According to a statement released by NASA, the pet rock was picked up by the front-left wheel of the Perseverance rover on February 4, also known as Sol 341 (the 341st Martian day of the Martian year) (opens in a new tab). The rock has intermittently appeared in photos captured by the Hazard Avoidance Camera on the rover's front left (Hazcam). After hitching a ride for the first time 126 days (123 sols) ago, recent photos show that the rock is still moving along with Perseverance as it tumbles. (The length of a Martian day, known as a sol, is only 37 minutes longer than a day on Earth.)

 

A little more than a quarter of the way into the rover's mission on Mars, the rock has been traveling along for the ride with Perseverance. When the rock began to make a home in the wheel of Perseverance, the rover was investigating the Máaz formation in the Jezero crater. Scientists believe ancient lava flows formed this area of the crater. Since then, the rover has traveled a distance of 5.3 miles (8.5 kilometers), passing through the Octavia E. Butler landing site, which is the location where the Perseverance spacecraft first touched down on Mars in February 2021, and past the remnants of the Kodiak delta, which was once the link between an ancient river and a lake. The rover will soon begin preparing for an ascent of one of the steep slopes within the Jezero crater, which may cause its Stoney stowaway to dislodge.

 

Because it is likely of volcanic origin, the pet rock will likely be surrounded by rocks that are extremely different from itself when it ultimately falls out of the rover's wheel. This is because when it does fall out, it will eventually happen. According to the statement, one of the scientists working on the mission joked about the possibility that "we might mislead a future Mars geologist who finds it out of place" during a recent conference.

 

During its mission, the spacecraft, known as Perseverance, or Percy, took up several other small rocks in its front-right wheel. However, these rocks fell out within a few days or weeks. According to the statement, this places the most recent pebbly passenger in the record books as the most successful hitchhiker on Mars.

 

However, the Percy rover is not the only one to have found a pet rock on Mars. According to NASA, the operators of the Spirit rover, which roamed Mars between January 2004 and March 2010, had to perform a sharp turn maneuver in December 2004 to shake out a "potato-sized" rock stuck in the rover's right-rear wheel. Scientists feared the rock would cause significant damage if it were not removed.

 

In the past, scooping up rocks that were not wanted in other areas of the rover has been a far more serious issue for the Perseverance rover. On December 29, several small pebbles made their way into a component of the rover's machinery, which resulted in Percy having to shut down its operations for close to a week. After forcing the rover to disconnect its drilling arm to take accurate photographs of the damaged region, the experts in charge of the mission eventually figured out a technique to remove the stones.

Article source : https://www.livescience.com/perseverance-rover-pet-rock

Image source  : https://pixabay.com/id/photos/batu-air-terjun-keseimbangan-5677828/