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NASA’s Perseverance rover left this ejectable belly on Mars.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
Landing a mission on Mars leaves a mark. It’s not just the leftover landing gear that is left behind on the surface. NASA’s Perseverance rover dropped a piece of himself on the floor on Saturday, but it was all planned.
The rover arrived on Mars wearing a belly pan, a protective panel for its sampling system. Part of the rover’s job will be packing rock and soil samples from Mars into small tubes for later recovery by a future mission.
NASA tweeted a GIF on Saturday showing the pan in place under the rover followed by the pan resting on the ground. “The next step is to check my sampling system now that its cover panel is off,” NASA said.
The rover used its robotic arm to get the images below. To give us a better idea of how the ejectable belly pan works, NASA has also shown what the the process was like a workout when the rover was still on Earth.
I am preparing to drop the cover that protects my sampling system. Look at this practice “pan of the belly” of my return to Earth: pic.twitter.com/yXkTvVfunF
– NASA’s Mars Rover Perseverance (@NASAPersevere) March 12, 2021
The sampling system is a new feature for a NASA rover. The machine will take samples, seal them in tubes and leave them on the surface. The equipment – including drilling rig and 43 sample containers – is located under the belly of the rover.
Perseverance arrived on Mars in February. The belly drop was part of the post-landing plan. “This exposes the workspace to the Martian atmosphere and makes more room for sample handling operations in that workspace,” NASA said.
The belly pan will become one more artefact of human exploration on Mars. It’s a good thing that there aren’t any tickets to dump garbage on the Red Planet.
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