It doesn’t make sense for some spaghetti to be on Martian soil. First, because man has not reached Mars. Second, because there are no Italian food restaurants on the planet. And third, because the POT would have reported with great fanfare that aliens enjoy a good bolognese.
The truth of the matter is that strange spaghetti became one of the most absurd mysteries on Marswhere the trusty Perseverance rover does its job of investigating the surface of the red world.
Since the US space agency’s Perseverance rover landed in Jezero Crater in February 2021, very interesting things have been discovered, among many, these noodles.
It was in mid-July when Percy’s front-facing hazard-avoidance camera, as the rover is affectionately known, captured an image of a “Martian tumbleweed,” but to the naked eye it looks like debris.
What is spaghetti really?
At the time, a NASA spokesperson reported in an email that the object must be some debris from the mission, but it is not clear what exactly it is.
So if no one had a picnic on Mars, what the hell is this spaghetti? Well, this dish is not a tribute to the Italians, but rather tangled ropes.
The space agency accurately explained that it is a piece of Dacron nettinga polyester fiber that was used in the thermal blankets of the Entry, Descent and Landing equipment known as EDL, the rover’s landing system, corroborating the first hypotheses that the fibrous object was of terrestrial and not Martian origin.
“The hardware teams suspect that this is another piece of Dacron netting, based on the observed 2x2mm2 grid mesh pattern. They noted that this particular piece of net appears to have undergone significant unraveling/shredding, suggesting that it was subjected to strong forces.”, detailed NASA.