STRANGE! NASA finds suspicious object stuck to foot of Mars helicopter

tech.hindustantimes.com:

"There's something on your foot, Mars Helicopter!" - NASA's scientists said while pointing towards a suspicious object that was stuck to the Mars Helicopter. The US space agency is investigating a piece of debris that got stuck on the foot of the Mars Ingenuity helicopter during its latest flight. So, did the litle green men on Mars, the aliens, did it? NASA has confirmed that “a small piece of foreign object debris (FOD) was seen in footage from the Mars helicopter's navigation camera (Navcam) for a portion of its 33rd flight.” Strangely, the this debris was not visible in Navcam footage from the previous flight.

Thankfully, the object did not impact the flight of NASA's Mars Ingenuity helicopter, as the US space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory tweeted to confirm, "As shown in the GIF, it eventually came off and did not impact a successful Flight 33.” Along with the information, the agency also shared a short video clip of the foreign object debris stuck to the foot of the flight from the earliest frames to approximately halfway through the video. After that it fell from the leg and drifted back to the Mars surface.

The 33rd flight by Ingenuity on Mars lasted for just over 55 seconds on September 24. The space agency says that the 4 lbs rotorcraft achieved a height of 33 feet above the surface of Mars while travelling around 365 feet before settling down at its latest landing spot. NASA has also confirmed that “the Ingenuity and Perseverance Mars 2020 teams are working to discern the source of the debris.” That means the last word on the strange object has still not been said although whether aliens remain on the list of suspects is not known so far.

The Mars Helicopter, which is called Ingenuity, was dispatched to Mars