Silver foil found on Mars is litter from rover's landing

Nasa's Perseverance rover typically beams back evocative images of bleak dusty landscapes, red-hued sandstorms and Martian rock samples. So its operators were surprised to receive an image on Monday of a shiny silver object resembling a discarded crisp packet wedged between two rocks.

- Hannah Devlin

The object, the Nasa team concluded, is a piece of debris discarded by the robotic craft during its touchdown in February 2021.

"My team has spotted something unexpected: It's a piece of a thermal blanket that they think may have come from my descent stage, the rocket-powered jet pack that set me down on landing day back in 2021," the Perseverance Twitter account reported.

"That shiny bit of foil is part of a thermal blanket - a material used to control temperatures. It's a surprise finding this here: my descent stage crashed about 2km away. Did this piece land here after that, or was it blown here by the wind?"