When a spacecraft dramatically parachutes down to a distant world, debris will inevitably litter the landing site. NASA has documented the diverse debris scattered by the 2021 landing of its high-tech Perseverance rover, including a strange-looking ball of tangled, “spaghetti”-like material, which the space agency believes they’ve identified.
NASA suspects the tangled detritus — which stirred intrigue on the internet — is a piece of netting (called “Dacron netting”) that is used in thermal blankets to protect the spacecraft from extreme temperatures and conditions, like when plunging through the Martian atmosphere at some 12,000 mph.