Mars 'Bright Object' Actually Curiosity Rover Remnant

'Bright Object' On Mars Actually Plastic from Curiosity Rover

by SPACE.com Staff

Date: 09 October 2012 Time: 03:40 PM ET

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This photo, taken by the Curiosity rover's ChemCam instrument on Oct. 8, 2012, shows a close-up view of the piece (visible slightly below and to the left of the photo's center) that apparently fell off the robot. CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech View full size image

A small piece of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has apparently fallen off into the Red Planet dirt, scientists announced today (Oct. 9).

Curiosity team members spotted the odd bright object on Sunday (Oct. 7) while studying photos of the rover's first Martian soil-scooping activity. Curiosity then spent much of Monday photographing the scrap further, allowing researchers to determine that it likely came off the 1-ton rover — though they're still not sure what exactly it is, or if its absence will affect Curiosity's mission appreciably.

"The rover team's assessment is that the bright object is something from the rover, not Martian material," mission team members wrote in an update today. "It appears to be a shred of plastic material, likely benign, but it has not been definitively identified."

More - Link >>> http://www.space.com/17979-mars-rover-curiosity-plastic-piece.html

Source: Space.com .

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