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Mars NASA Space

Mars Rover Peseverance Has Picked up a Hitchhiking Rock (space.com) 25

Posted by EditorDavid from the riding-the-wheels dept.
Four months ago, NASA's Mars rover Perseverance picked up a "pet rock," tucked inside its left front wheel, that's been riding along ever since. Space.com reports: So far, its ridden across 5.3 miles (8.5 kilometers) with the Perseverance rover as it drives across its Jezero Crater home on Mars.

Perseverance has carried the rock north across its landing site, named for the famed late science fiction author Octavia E. Butler, and then west across a region called "Kodiak," the remains of a former delta at Jezero. The rover is currently in the midst of what NASA calls its Delta Front Campaign and may have drilled into its first sedimentary Mars rock, Ravanis wrote.

"Perseverance's pet rock is now a long way from home," Ravanis wrote. "It's possible that the rock may fall out at some point along our future ascent of the crater rim. If it does so, it will land amongst rocks that we expect to be very different from itself."

If that happens, a future Martian geologist might be a bit confused to find the rock so out of place, Ravanis added.
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Mars Rover Peseverance Has Picked up a Hitchhiking Rock More

Mars Rover Peseverance Has Picked up a Hitchhiking Rock

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  • As they say... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Gas Grass Or Ass--Nobody Rides For Free.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ls671 ( 1122017 )

      Oh come on! I just went outside with a flashlight to check my car tires and found about 12 of those hitchhikers caught in the my tires threads. Is this really news just because it happened on Mars? What else could somebody have expected?

      • I just went outside with a flashlight to check my car tires and found about 12 of those hitchhikers caught in the my tires threads.

        If you look at the selfie Perseverance took (in TFA), you'll see the, rather large, rock is on the inside of the wheel.

        Is this really news just because it happened on Mars?

        Don't know, but it's an odd place for a rock to turn up and it's different than your example ...

    • Gas Grass Or Ass--Nobody Rides For Free.

      And here I thought writing about a "pet" rock stuck in the tread of a Martian rover, was called Slow News Day.

      I mean fucking seriously, we're controlling a vehicle sitting on another planet. Has it really become that boring that this is what we're reporting on?

      Talk about taxpayer dollars set at maximum burn rate with minimal lift.

      • I mean fucking seriously, we're controlling a vehicle sitting on another planet. Has it really become that boring that this is what we're reporting on?

        Have you really become so jaded that it's already worn off that we have a rover driving around on Mars to have a rock stuck in its wheel?

        • I mean fucking seriously, we're controlling a vehicle sitting on another planet. Has it really become that boring that this is what we're reporting on?

          Have you really become so jaded that it's already worn off that we have a rover driving around on Mars to have a rock stuck in its wheel?

          Did you just seriously try and justify this article, with that shit?

          To your point, yes. We are in fact driving around a Martian rover. Tends to make you wonder why in the hell we're sitting here chatting about a rock stuck in the "tire", as if that's some off-planet phenomenon no one has ever seen.

          • This is boring, so it doesn't belong on slashdot, so I'm going to bitch about it, which is tragically more boring. Your hypocrisy has been noted, and it is boring too.

            • His complaint was more interesting than the article, and it was a valid point. No one is going to give a flying duck about a pebble that moved 4 km's on a planet that regularly has wind storms that clock 70 miles an hour lasting anything from two weeks to two months. No one gives a flying duck NOW. What this article says to me is that we spent millions/billions landing a car on Mars and all it's achieved in the last x months is moving a pebble 4 km's.

  • "I'm not saying it was Earthlings ... but it was Earthlings."

  • Prior art (Score:5, Funny)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday June 11, 2022 @11:53PM (#62612670)

    Lucy: "I got five pieces of candy!"
    Violet: "I got a chocolate bar!"
    Schroeder: "I got a quarter!"
    Perseverance: "I got a rock."

  • This does not technologically entertain me. Iâ(TM)ve carried rocks in my tires and wheel wells all my life.

  • The Martians put a bug in it, dressed-up as a "pebble in the sky" as Asimov called it.

  • "If that happens, a future Martian geologist might be a bit confused to find the rock so out of place, Ravanis added."

    These hypothetical future Martian geologists are smart enough to notice a rock is a handful of miles away from its peers, but not smart enough to look up Perseverance's path? Or know it was in that general vicinity? Seems incredibly unlikely, even if we have some informational dark-age and lose a lot of knowledge.

  • The name of the rover is Perseverance, not Peseverance. C'mon editors, that's an embarrassing typo in the article title.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GoTeam ( 5042081 )
      Hah, I totally missed that when reading the title. But you don't need to be so perssimistic about the editors!
  • That kind of makes it a non-decision to pick it up if it was hitchhiking the galaxy and still knew where it's towel was . . .

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