How do you choose a rock on Mars? Sometimes you don't—it chooses you.

For the past four months, Perseverance has had an unexpected traveling companion. Back on sol 341—that's over 100 sols ago, in early February—a rock found its way into the rover's front left wheel, and since hitching a ride, it's been transported more than 5.3 miles (8.5 km). This rock isn't doing any damage to the wheel, but throughout its (no doubt bumpy!) journey, it has clung on and made periodic appearances in our left Hazcam images.

This is not the first time a rock has hitched a ride on a Mars rover mission.

NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity has suffered a sensor failure, according to Håvard Grip, the chief helicopter pilot on the project. In a recent blog post on the NASA Science page, he described some of the challenges the tiny robot is experiencing in the harsh environment and also noted that a sensor failure is going to require a computer patch.

NASA will launch a research rocket from remote northern Australia this month in the agency's first blast off from a commercial space port outside the United States.

Three suborbital sounding rockets will be launched from the Arnhem Space Center on Indigenous-owned land near the mining town of Nhulunbuy in the Northern Territory on June 26, July 4 and 12, said NASA and the launch pad's owner, Equatorial Launch Australia.