5 special objects on the NASA robot that landed on Mars

The Perseverance rover landed on Mars on February 18 with many unique and meaningful objects.

For decades, NASA has maintained a tradition called 'festooning ,' putting interesting objects on its spacecraft and rovers that fly into space. Pioneer 10 and 11, two spacecraft launched in the 1970s, carried a plaque depicting Earth's position in the galaxy as well as Carl Sagan's drawings of naked men and women. One of the objects on the Perseverance rover carries a similar message. The plaque attached to the rover uses the same monogram used on Pioneer to depict Earth, the Sun, and Mars, all in Morse code for 'Let's Explore.' It's just one of many curious objects that have accompanied NASA's Perseverance rover.

10.9 million names

A metal plate containing three microchips. (Photo: NASA).

The board on the Perseverance rover also contains a special message: three microchips containing 10,932,295 names from NASA's "Names to Mars" campaign . This is a tradition for rovers to Mars. The most recent rover, Curiosity, also carried 1.2 million names. In addition, the chip contains 155 student essays selected by NASA. The winner of the writing contest was Alex Mather, a seventh-grader from Virginia.

Gratitude to medical staff during Covid-19

A plaque depicting the symbol of the medical profession in the United States. (Photo: NASA).

NASA sends a thank you to healthcare workers battling Covid-19. Perseverance launched in July 2020, just months after the virus first appeared in the US. The engineering team behind the project wanted to acknowledge the impact of the pandemic on the year the rover launched, especially on the frontline workers. So they attached an aluminum plaque to the left of the rover featuring a snake wrapped around a stick, the symbol of the US healthcare industry, and an image of the Earth.

Mastcam-Z

Engraved image on Mastcam-Z camera pair. (Photo: NASA).

While the plaques that name and honor medical workers are purely decorative, some of the other items on Perseverance have their own functions. One of them is the Mastcam-Z, a pair of cameras that can zoom in to take panoramic color images of Mars. The Mastcam-Z is fully functional and carries the important message: "Are we alone in the universe? We are here to search for signs of life and collect samples of Mars for study on Earth. We hope the journey can be safe and the exploration enjoyable."

The phrase 'happy exploration' is written around the message in several languages. Mastcam-Z also features images of early Earth life forms such as cyanobacteria, ferns and dinosaurs, along with drawings of men and women similar to the Pioneer plaque.

SHERLOC

The SHERLOC device on the Perseverance robot. (Photo: NASA).

The project's engineers hid a special coin made from helmet material in one of the devices. The coin was used as a calibration target for the SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence Spectroscopy for Organics and Chemicals) instrument, engraved with the fictional address of detective Sherlock Holmes (221b Baker Street, London). SHERLOC also featured a piece of Martian meteorite and four samples of spacesuit material. NASA wanted to test these materials on the Martian surface.

Martian meteorite

A piece of Martian meteorite seen in Perseverance's geological laser. (Photo: NASA).

Engineers building Perseverance's SuperCam instrument also placed a piece of Martian meteorite. SuperCam is a laser mounted on the rover that vaporizes samples of Martian rock and soil to determine their composition. The meteorite had previously made a round-trip flight to the International Space Station.