NASA has discovered a noodle-shaped object on Mars - but it's not what was expected.
The space agency's Perseverance rover, which is currently roaming the planet, took a rare photo of a silver object wedged between two rocks of Mars' Jezero Crater.
However, the shiny object which was beamed down to Earth for all to see was in fact some junk from the rover, Interesting Engineering reports.
Taking to Twitter to explain the "discovery" a member of the Perserverance team wrote: "My team has spotted something unexpected.
"It's a piece of a thermal blanket that they think may have come from my descent stage, the rocket-powered jet pack that set me down on landing day back in 2021."
On Tuesday, the rover spotted the spaghetti shaped piece of debris and it left researchers scratching their heads.
It's thought the bit of metal comes from one of the rover's front-facing hazard avoidance cameras.
These cameras help to keep an eye on the landscape - to protect the rover when it's driving or using its robotic arm.
Hypothesis on where the junk - which was pictured by Mars' chopper Ingenuity, came from include previous NASA missions to Mars.
The Mars Perseverance rover completed its year anniversary on the Red Planet last February.
On February 18, 2021, the spacecraft carrying NASA's $2.7billion robotic explorer named Perseverance placed the rover gently on the foreign planet.
The event marked NASA's most enthusiastic and thorough effort in decades to study if there was ever life on the Red Planet.
