Debris from NASA's Mars landings is still creating little mysteries on the Red Planet

An image taken by the Ingenuity helicopter of the parachute and backshell crash site on Mars. 

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA's Mars rover Perseverance and its helicopter sidekick Ingenuity are searching the Red Planet for signs of ancient life but they're also bumping into bit of debris from their own landing.

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Detailed colored images taken by the Ingenuity helicopter show a discarded parachute and a backshell located 1km away from Perseverance's landing site. These pieces were part of the entry, descent and landing (EDL) hardware that was discarded onto the surface of the planet when Perseverance landed on Mars on February 18, 2021. A NASA blog post showed that the debris findings did not stop there. After the parachute and backshell were identified, other smaller pieces of the EDL hardware were spotted on the planet. 

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