'Decorative and Useful': NASA reveals 5 items travelling to Mars on Perseverance rover

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover on its journey to red planet to probe signs of Martian life has been travelling into with a myri of interesting objects that NASA calls both ‘decorative and useful’. In a release on December 19, NASA intrigued  astrophile as it shared details of 5 key mysterious objects ranging from placards to a slice of Martian meteorite on board perseverance that people were hardly aware of. 

“More than halfway to Red Planet, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover isn't just shuttling sophisticated science instruments and tubes to be filled with Earth-bound rock samples,” NASA wrote, unravelling mystery. It stated that rover was, in fact, crammed with symbols, mottos, and objects that were critically useful and also playful—like names of 10.9 million people who h purchased tickets to fly to Mars—virtually. 

In NASA’s own langu rover was hering to ‘early ’ trition termed as ‘festooning’. In an example, NASA cites an example that ncy installed remains from Twin tower blast onboard Opportunity and Spirit, and a golden record on Voyr 1 and 2, meanwhile NASA loed Spirit with a memorial of crew that worked with Shuttle Columbia that blasted catastrophically on February 1, 2003. This is crew of Indian origin astronaut Kalpana Chawla— first-ever woman to go to . NASA shared a similar list of key items onboard Perseverance.

1. Mastcam-Z 

educational object Mastcam-Z is Perseverance's “eyes," according to NASA. This is a sundial device that helps scientists and astronauts to determine wher it is day or night in as camera on object captures colour and grayscale swatches to determine position of sun from . Interestingly, it has figures of disaurs, early man cyabacteria, a fern as a tribute to early life. 

2. SHERLOC'S coin

As NASA bets, this coin me of a slice of Martian meteorite, and suit materials, including helmet-visor material could be of extreme interest to those that play GPS-enabled outdoor Geocaching. This is a special coin with dress of a fictional detective namesake inscribed on it. Perseverance’s coin is a part of calibration target for ‘SHERLOC’, which is basically an instrument ‘Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals’ that is used with ar camera like instrument WATSON which takes pictures in . 

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3. SuperCam

This is a favourite of rock collectors and geologists, as per NASA’s guess. This is a laser instrument that bolts rocks and soil and determines its composition from vapours. Interestingly, Supercam me a roundtrip to International Station (ISS) even before it was loed on Perseverance. 

4. Microchip with 11 Million Names

se are names of people that wanted to fly to ‘mars’ and were virtually launched into by NASA as perseverance lifted off. microchip was stenciled with names by NASA which were submitted by public. Perseverance is carrying three small chips which also mentions names of 155 finalist essays that participated in Name Rover contest.

5. COVID Memorial 

Last but t least, NASA’s perseverance is carrying a plate which is installed on left side of rover chassis. It commemorates impact of COVID-19 pandemic, victims, and healthcare workers that laid ir lives battling coronavirus. aluminum plate has planet Earth designed supported by Rod of Asclepius, an ancient Greek symbol associated with healing and medicines. 

(im credit: @NASAPersevere Twitter)

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