Five weird things NASA's Perseverance rover delivered to Mars

After a nearly seven-month journey through space, Perseverance -- the largest and the most advanced rover NASA has ever sent to another world -- successfully touched down on the surface of Mars on Friday in a nail-biting landing that marks its first step in the search for signs of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet.

The rover will set in motion a NASA plan that is to be carried out over the next decade — one that could bring samples from Mars back to Earth, where scientists will have even more capabilities to find something signalling that our planet is not the only place where life has ever been found.

Read | NASA's Ingenuity helicopter could pave way for future rover-drone tandem missions

For decades, the American space agency has been following a tradition of adding weird items to spacecraft and rovers heading to space.

Here are some weird things that Perseverance is carrying with it:

10.9 million names

Following the tradition, NASA’s Mars rover is carrying three microchips with 10.9 million names of people who participated in the “Send your Name to Mars” campaign. The last Mars rover ‘Curiosity’ had carried a microchip with 1.2 million names on it.

Read | A glimpse of Mars from NASA's Perseverance rover

A Covid-19 tribute

In order to demonstrate the agency’s appreciation for those who have put their lives on the line for the well-being of other during the pandemic, the rover is carrying a small aluminium plate on its left side showing an image of a serpent wound around a staff holding up the Earth. It is a tribute to the doctors, nurses, and other frontline workers who are fighting the pandemic.

Mastcam-Z – “Are we alone?”

The two Mastcam-Z cameras installed in the rover are designed to boost its driving and core-sampling capabilities. The instrument provides a detailed look at the rocks and other findings on the Red Planet. "Mastcam-Z will be the first Mars colour camera that can zoom, enabling 3D images at unprecedented resolution," Jim Bell, Mastcam-Z principal investigator, said in a statement.

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It also holds an important message: Are we alone? We came here to look for signs of life, and to collect samples of Mars for study on Earth. To those who follow, we wish a safe journey and the joy of discovery.”

Finding SHERLOC

SHERLOC is partnered with a camera worthy of its namesake detective: WATSON (the Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering). Whenever WATSON takes a picture of the target, geocaching fans can go looking for the images as they show up in Perseverance's image gallery at mars.nasa.gov.

Read | Historic touchdown! NASA Perseverance rover to hunt for ancient life in Mars

Mars Meteorite

The scientists who built Perseverance's SuperCam added their own slice of Martian meteorite. This particular piece of rock on SuperCam made a roundtrip voyage to the International Space Station before scientists added it to Perseverance.