It’s been almost two years Mars-Rover active on the rocky surface. He documents his surroundings again and again in photographs, which are then published by NASA. Such a picture recently caused fun excitement, among other things.
Mars Rover: Does NASA Photo Show “Space Birds”?
On the image of the Mars rover, NASA recently published, not much unusual can be seen at first. At least when compared to their typical counterparts from the planet’s surface. However, one detail led to wild, not entirely serious speculation Reddit.
Under the title “Object in the sky from Perseverance’ Nav Cam?”, users share their interpretation of a black dot that can be seen right in the middle of the image. However, it quickly becomes clear that this is definitely an explainable phenomenon.
While some speak of “Ultraman”, “space birds”, “plastic bags” or “ants”, others explain the probable background of the object. For example, since there isn’t enough atmospheric pressure to lift anything larger than fine dust into the Martian air, according to MclaurinPCBuilds, others say it’s more likely a camera bug or a particle on the sensor used.
That’s what NASA says about such objects
When Cnet asked the responsible NASA experts, scientist Justin Maki explained that the spot in the Martian sky did not even exist there. The artifact shown is a so-called “bad” pixel:
“These are caused by the micron-sized pieces of dirt on the detector. Many/all images from this imager have these types of artifacts. They are usually only visible when the camera is taking pictures of the sky or some other flat radiometric surface.”
Justin Maki, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (via Cnet)
That such phenomena occur again and again indicates a NASA blog post from March 2021. At the time, the team cited such a “strange little speck” artifact as an example of the bad pixel problem.
Sources: NASA, Cnet, Reddit
War has been raging in Ukraine since February 24, 2022. here Can you help those affected?.