NASA / JPL solar system ambassador Mark A. Brown has created quite a conversation piece with this life-size snow sculpture from Mars Rover.
Mark A. Brown
If it’s snowing, you can look out over the winter landscape and think about making a snowman with a root nose. Mark A. Brown, a solar system ambassador for NASA / JPL, looked out for the remnants of a snowstorm in Iowa and decided to life-size frozen perseverance Mars Rover.
Brown spent three days building the Rover, which adorns sports wheels with silver spray paint and a machine comb (the camera-equipped “head” of the Rover) made of PVC pipe and a cardboard box.
The snowflake has a remarkable resemblance to the real thing, who’s on his way to Mars with a scheduled landing on February 18th. “The plan was to try to create an equal size … and I had enough snow to do that,” Brown told CNET.
Snow farmer Mark A. Brown made sure to include the Mars helicopter Ingenuity as part of the installation.
Mark A. Brown
Perseverance does not travel alone. It carries a helicopter named Ingenuity in his abdomen. The experimental helicopter will attempt a powered flight on the red planet. Brown made sure to pay tribute to Ingenuity with a bonus model of the helicopter sitting next to the rover.
The icy rover was a creative way for Brown to move on with only a month until Perseverance’s big arrival.
“I wanted to do something unique and instructive for my environment,” Brown said. “A lot of people walk daily, and once they could do that, they could look at this sculpture that’s going on there and ask for it.”
The snowflake may be just as rugged as its counterpart. Brown shared a video of some wicked winds that struck the sculpture on Tuesday.
Just like the real rover, this one is persistent.
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