'Otherworldly' crash site discovered on surface of Mars by NASA helicopter

An "otherwordly" crash site of another spacecraft was photographed by a NASA helicopter.

Back in 2020, the Perseverance Rover was sent up to the Red Planet with the Mars Helicopter called Ingenuity strapped to the bottom of it.

The initial plan was for Ingenuity - otherwise known as Ginny - to make no more than five test flights within 30 days but in the end, the aircraft surpassed expectations when it completed 72 flights between April 2021 and January 2024.

It's more impressive when you consider the fact that the helicopter was just half a meter (1.6 feet) tall and weighed less than two kilograms (four pounds).

As the first aircraft to successfully complete a powered, controlled flight on another planet, the purpose of the flights was to explore parts of Mars that couldn't be reached by the Perseverance rover.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

One of the notable aerial images was captured in 2022 when the helicopter took photos of debris on the dusty, cold, desert.

"There's definitely a sci-fi element to it. It exudes otherworldly, doesn't it?" Ian Clark, a Perseverance parachute system engineer, told The New York Times.

“They say a picture's worth 1,000 words, but it's also worth an infinite amount of engineering understanding.”

But before you go and make assumptions that Martians or alien life were responsible for the wreckage, this wasn't the case but rather was the result of us humans.

So what was the debris?

Basically, it was landing equipment used to help Ingenuity and the Perseverance Rover land on the surface of Mars in 2021.

In the photos, you can see the upright backshell and the debris which is thought to have impacted the surface at about 78 mph (126 kph).

“The backshell’s protective coating appears to have remained intact during Mars atmospheric entry. Many of the 80 high-strength suspension lines connecting the backshell to the parachute are visible and also appear intact," the space agency said.

“Spread out and covered in dust, only about a third of the orange-and-white parachute - at 70.5 feet (21.5 meters) wide, it was the biggest ever deployed on Mars - can be seen, but the canopy shows no signs of damage from the supersonic airflow during inflation.”

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