Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
It’s not every day that the American space agency NASA says something shocking. They are a serious organization by trade and generally avoid sensational titles. Not this week though, when it announced, plain and simple, that “Persistence will find popcorn on the planet Mars.”
Perseverance, formerly known as Mars 2020, is the latest NASA rover to be sent to the Red Planet. He left our world in the summer of 2020 and arrived at a place called Crater Lake in the spring of the following year.
The rover’s main mission is to search for signs of ancient microbial life in an attempt to prove that a neighboring planet was once hospitable enough to support life as we know it. To do this, it uses a number of instruments, including cameras, spectrometers, environmental sensors and radars.
Loaded with hardware, the rover also acted as the initial launch platform for the world’s first helicopter to be used in another planet’s atmosphere.
Small in size and looking a lot like some kind of insect (or drone, if you want a more technical comparison), Ingenuity has taken to the Martian sky a record 72 times, covering a total of 10.5 miles (17 km) and reaching altitudes. 78.7 feet (24 meters) and stay in the air for a total of 128.8 minutes.
The helicopter didn’t make any major discoveries, but it did open the door to a whole new way of exploring extraterrestrial locations, one that NASA plans to use heavily during future missions. For this reason, the agency calls the helicopter’s achievements “The Wright Brothers moment.”
Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech
While on Mars, Perseverance was given yet another task: it was tasked with collecting samples of Martian soil and depositing them at precise locations on the surface for an upcoming mission called Mars Sample Return.
Quite a busy and capable bee, this Perseverance, but did she really find popcorn on Mars?
First, here’s a little about where the rover is now. After landing in the Jezero crater, the wheeled machine moved quite a lot and traveled almost 27 km from the landing site. It’s currently doing its thing in an area of the planet called Neretva Vallis, a feature believed to be an ancient river channel that fed water into the crater.
There is a way out in this Vallis “various boulders and patches of lighter ground” people say Mount Washburn. As interesting as this place is, it also gave Persistence a glimpse of another interesting place, so bright it was called the Bright Angel.
The rover arrived near the site this week and this is where the popcorn was found. Well, it’s not actually popcorn, but rocks densely packed with small balls that have a popcorn-like texture.
The space agency released a picture of the site to give us a better idea of what they’re talking about (the main photo of this piece), but to be honest, I’m having a hard time determining what popcorn-like balls we’ve been told about. Then again, I’m not a geologist .
Photo: NASA
By all accounts, while not the cinematic treats we all love, these things are described as unlike anything the rover has ever encountered, strange textures that have “hypnotized“geologists.
In addition to these rock balls, the site is filled with sharp-edged stones, in much greater quantities than previously found.
The initial assessment is that these features are another indication of groundwater flowing through the area sometime billions of years ago, but after the rocks were laid down.
Due to the strangeness of the location, NASA intends to keep Perseverance in the region for a little while longer to conduct a more detailed investigation. A trip up is on the cards as scientists will search for the place of origin of this rock sequence and how it relates to the rest of the Vallis.
When the time is right, probably as early as next weekend (June 22), one of the rover’s instruments, an abrasion tool installed on the rover’s arm, will be used to examine the rocks in detail and perform chemical analysis. Depending on what this analysis reveals, a decision is made whether to sample the site or not.
After her mission in Neretva Vallis ends, Perseverance heads to a place called the Serpentine Rapids. He’ll probably find something interesting there too, but we just hope that NASA doesn’t call these finds by another name for food or anything that gives us a false reason to hope we’ve found aliens.
Or when he tells them that, he might at least use some punctuation to let us know he’s kidding.