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Star Wars fans amazed after finding ‘lightsaber on Mars’

Home> News

Updated 08:50 28 Dec 2022 GMTPublished 08:44 28 Dec 2022 GMT

Star Wars fans amazed after finding ‘lightsaber on Mars’

NASA's Perseverance Rover just dropped a familiar looking object onto the surface of Mars

Joe Harker

Joe Harker

Science fiction fans following the development of NASA's latest mission to Mars are pretty sure the space agency have been taking cues from Star Wars when it comes to the design of their gadgets.

Pictures released by NASA from their Perseverance Mars rover have shown what looks suspiciously like a lightsaber lying on the red ground of that other planet.

Obviously, it can't be a lightsaber as those aren't actually real and NASA wouldn't sent a mission to Mars just to deposit a cache of the weapons onto the planet's surface.

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However, the more you look the more it just looks like a lightsaber, that elegant weapon of a more civilised age which became the iconic tool of Jedi Knights and Sith Lords.

Either someone at NASA has never seen Star Wars and accidentally made something that just looks like a lightsaber, or far more likely is that a bunch of sci-fi fans work for them and have relished the chance to put a bit of their favourite franchise into their job.

The NASA Perseverance rover, which has been dropping lightsaber-like objects onto the surface of Mars.
Geopix / Alamy Stock Photo

Star Wars fans who spotted the item immediately piled in to make their references, with one joking that 'someone dropped their lightsaber' and others joining in to say that it'll be a nice surprise for people to discover '150 years from now when we forgot about this'.

As for what it actually is, NASA say the object is a titanium tube containing a rock sample which the rover has deposited on the surface of Mars.

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In total, 10 tubes will be laid onto the surface of the red planet by the rover, with them stashed as a backup in case the other samples already collected by the robot fail to make it back to Earth.

As for those hoping to wield a real lightsaber one day (and presumably not slice off your own arms spinning it around making whoosh noises), you might just be in luck when it comes to achieving your wildest hopes and dreams.

NASA experts testing the lightsaber-thingy before sending it off to Mars.
NASA

People have previously developed a weapon called the 'protosaber', which looks and acts like a lightsaber but requires you to lug around a very chunky battery pack to keep it powered up.

Earlier this year, YouTuber Alex Burkan won a Guinness World Record for creating the world's first functional retracting lightsaber.

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It can produce a plasma blade a metre long which reaches temperatures of up to 2,800C and can slice through steel.

Sadly, we haven't quite cracked making a lightsaber which can stay on long enough to have a big dramatic fight scene right out of Star Wars as it only works for 30 seconds on full power.

Meanwhile, Burkan has set his sights on creating a working Iron Man suit next, so figuring out how to make a working sustainable lightsaber could be a job for someone else.

Perhaps it could be you?

Featured Image Credit: NASA

Topics: Star Wars, Weird, Space, NASA

Joe Harker
Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

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@MrJoeHarker

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