The Perseverance rover caught the “dust devil” (7 photos + 2 videos)

NASA's Perseverance rover has captured a 2km-tall ghostly "dust devil" moving across the surface of the Red Planet. Dust devils are funnel-shaped vortices of hot air and dust particles. And they are found not only on Earth.





A giant dust devil 2 km high was moving from east to west at a speed of about 19 km per hour near the Thorofare Ridge, located on the western edge of the Martian crater Jezero. It was located about 4 kilometers from the rover.

Perseverance landed on Mars in February 2021 after nearly seven months in space. In addition to collecting rock samples and producing oxygen, it acts as a “pair of eyes” that scientists can use to learn about the weather on the Red Planet.

The clip, which is edited to show the progress of the dust devil, consists of 21 frames taken four seconds apart, according to NASA.

In a blog post, scientists at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) explained that the dust devil was captured by one of Perseverance's "navigation cameras." Mounted at the top of the rover's long neck, these black-and-white navigation cameras use visible light to collect panoramic 3D images.



Although only the bottom 118 meters of the swirling vortex were visible in the camera frame, scientists used the shadow of the dust devil to estimate its total height as 2 kilometers.





“We can't see the top of the dust devil, but the shadow it casts gives us a good idea of its height,” said Mark Lemmon, a planetary scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and a member of the Perseverance team. — Most of them are vertical columns; If this dust devil were configured this way, its shadow would indicate that its height is about 2 kilometers."



The sped-up clip was filmed on August 30, the 899th Martian day, or “sol,” of the Perseverance mission.

One sol consists of 24 hours and 37 minutes - that is, slightly longer than one Earth day.

As on Earth, dust devils form when rising cells of warm air mix with descending columns of cooler air, carrying dust and debris with them.

But Martian "devils" could grow much larger than Earth's due to the lower gravity and abundance of dust on the Red Planet.

Dust devils are also most visible during the spring and summer months when temperatures are warmer.

This is because hot air near the planet's surface rises quickly through cooler air, which can cause an updraft.



It's summer in the northern hemisphere of Mars, where Perseverance is located. Perseverance was tasked with searching for dust devils in all directions to help scientists on Earth track Martian weather. It takes black-and-white images to reduce the amount of data sent to Earth, which means it can be received faster.



A full-scale model of Perseverance is demonstrated during the Mars Sample Return Mission press conference at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Mars Yard in Pasadena, California, April 11, 2023.

But the rover's key goal is to search for traces of fossilized microbial life and collect rock samples to return to Earth.

For more than two years, he was busy driving around Jezero Crater, collecting rock samples and placing them in a titanium tube. Jezero Crater was chosen as the site for collecting soil samples because scientists believe the area was once flooded and contained a river delta.



The Jezero Crater area near a four-billion-year-old fossilized river delta that may contain signs of ancient life

The secrets of this body of water, if it really existed, could be hidden in rock samples that scientists are eager to explore. However, the rover's mission is not to return the test tubes to Earth. He hides them in certain places so that they can becould be collected during a subsequent special search mission.

The Perseverance rover takes a soil sample

This joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) is currently in development, although there is reportedly little progress on it.

A report released last week by NASA's Institutional Review Board said the launch was at risk of being abandoned due to costs and certain "complexities."

“There is currently no credible, agreed-upon technical plan, nor adequately agreed upon timelines, costs and technical baselines that could be met with likely available funding,” the document said.