Technologies

Sorry, This NASA Mars Rover Image Doesn’t Show a Flying UFO

It’s never aliens, but at least there’s a good explanation for what it really is.

This story is part of Welcome to Mars, our series exploring the red planet.

Every morning, I make time to browse through raw images of Mars sent back by NASA’s rovers. I ooh and ah over the rock formations, and sometimes spot something goofy, like a mysterious black object hovering in a Perseverance rover image from Sunday.

The image comes from Percy’s left navigation camera. It shows a striking rock-strewn landscape and a hazy sky where the dark object appears.

So what’s going on here? It’s not aliens. A Reddit discussion of the image in a group dedicated to Mars resulted in some humorous takes on what it might be, like an ant or a plastic bag. The black shape resembles a speck of dirt or a piece of debris flying over Jezero Crater, but it’s not any of those things.

The dark object in the sky doesn’t actually exist. It’s a result of a camera artifact issue called «bad» pixels. «They are caused by micron-sized pieces of debris on the detector. Most/all imagers have these kinds of artifacts,» imaging scientist Justin Maki said in an email statement from NASA JPL. «They are generally only noticeable when the camera acquires images of the sky or some otherwise flat radiometric surface.»

If you’re not convinced, check out another left Navcam image from Sunday. The same dark streak appears, but this time it’s in the middle of a sandy landscape.

The bad-pixels issue has reared its head at other times. NASA’s Curiosity rover, which is exploring the Gale Crater in a different area of Mars, snapped a similar sky «object» in early October. As with the Percy image, it appeared as a dark spot floating in the air.

Perseverance camera team members addressed the «odd tiny black speck» artifacts in a blog post last year in relation to the rover’s mast-mounted cameras. Image processors are aware of the problem pixels and correct for them. We see the specks in the raw images sent back by the rovers because the photos haven’t been cleaned up yet.

Perseverance has been in residence on Mars since early 2021 and it’s already witnessed plenty of real-life oddball objects, like this spaghetti-like bundle of debris and a shiny piece of foil left over from its landing operations.

Camera specks are a fact of life for the Mars rovers. Our technology is amazing, but it’s not perfect. If anything, it’s a reminder of just how impressive an achievement the rovers are. Wheeled laboratories. On Mars. Sending snapshots home almost every day. Wow.

Technologies

Tesla Has a New Range of Affordable Electric Cars: How Much They Cost

The new, stripped-back versions of the Model Y and Model 3 have a more affordable starting price.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Oct. 22 #598

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Oct. 22, No. 598.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is a fun one — I definitely have at least two of these in my house. Some of the answers are a bit tough to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Catch all.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: A mess of items.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

BATE, LICE, SLUM, CAPE, HOLE, CARE, BARE, THEN, SLAM, SAMBA, BACK

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

TAPE, COIN, PENCIL, BATTERY, SHOELACE, THUMBTACK

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is JUNKDRAWER. To find it, look for the J that’s five letters down on the far-left row, and wind down, over and then up.

Quick tips for Strands

#1: To get more clue words, see if you can tweak the words you’ve already found, by adding an «S» or other variants. And if you find a word like WILL, see if other letters are close enough to help you make SILL, or BILL.

#2: Once you get one theme word, look at the puzzle to see if you can spot other related words.

#3: If you’ve been given the letters for a theme word, but can’t figure it out, guess three more clue words, and the puzzle will light up each letter in order, revealing the word.

Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for Oct. 22, #1586

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle for Oct. 22, No. 1,586.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Wordle puzzle features some letters I don’t often guess, but it’s not terribly difficult. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has one repeated letter.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

Today’s Wordle answer has one vowel.

Wordle hint No. 3: First letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with S.

Wordle hint No. 4: Last letter

Today’s Wordle answer ends with T.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer can refer to an action displaying spectacular skill and daring.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is STUNT.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, Oct. 21, No. 1,585 was DETOX.

Recent Wordle answers

Oct. 17, No. 1,581: GROSS
Oct. 18, No. 1,582: HAVEN
Oct. 19, No. 1,583: IDEAL
Oct. 20, No. 1,584: LIMBO

Quick tips for Wordle

#1: Check our list ranking the popularity of all the letters in the alphabet and choose your starter words accordingly. (TRAIN, STERN and AUDIO are good.)

#2: Don’t forget that letters can be used more than once.

#3: Many words are similar. You don’t want to use up multiple guesses that don’t advance your cause. So if the puzzle is STA_E, don’t guess STARE, STATE and STALE. Guess something that uses that R, T and L, like TWIRL.