After China’s Zhurong rover spotted its own landing parachute, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover also did the same and snapped a photo of the debris. More specifically, the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) hardware was discarded onto the surface at a safe distance away from the rover, including the parachute as well as backshell that you see here.
If you’re wondering why there isn’t more debris, it’s because some of the EDL hardware broke into smaller pieces when it impacted the surface. This means that the smaller pieces have been scattered around this site, including near the Hogwallow Flats region, a location roughly 2 km to the northwest of the EDL hardware crash zones. As of Sol 508 (July 24, 2022), NASA’s Perseverance team has catalogued roughly half a dozen pieces of suspected EDL debris in this area.
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NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its Left Mastcam-Z camera. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover’s mast. This image was acquired on April 16, 2022 (Sol 411) at the local mean solar time of 09:38:13,” according to NASA.
