NASA’s Perseverance Rover has left this ejectable belly pan on Mars.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
Leaving a mission on Mars leaves a trail. It’s not just the remnants of the landing gear left behind on the surface. NASA’s Perseverance Rover dropped a piece of him on the ground on Saturday, but it was all planned.
The rover arrived on Mars with a belly pan, a protective panel for its sampling system. Part of the rover’s job is to pack samples of Mars rocks and soils into small tubes for later retrieval by a future mission.
NASA tweeted GIF on Saturday point the pan in place under the rover, followed by the pan sitting on the ground. “The next thing is to check my sampling system when the cover panel is out,” NASA said.
The rover used its robot arm to get the sub-images. To give us a better idea of how the ejectable abdominal pan works, NASA also showed what the process looked like during a training fall when the rover was still on earth.
I’m getting ready to drop the cover that protects my sampling system. See how this exercise ‘belly pan’ falls when I was on earth again: pic.twitter.com/yXkTvVfunF
– NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) 12 March 2021
The sampling system is a new feature for a NASA rover. The machine will collect samples, seal them in tubes and leave them on the surface. The equipment, including drilling tools and 43 sample containers, is under the belly of the car.
Perseverance arrived on Mars in February. The abdominal panic was part of the plan after the landing. “This exposes the workspace to the atmosphere of Mars and makes more room for handling monsters within the workspace,” NASA said.
The abdominal pan will end up as another artifact of human exploration on Mars. It is good that there are no rubbish tickets on the red planet.
Follow CNET’s 2021 space calendar to stay up to date with all the latest space news this year. You can even add it to your own Google Calendar.