NASA’s latest March Rover got a significant extraterrestrial observation when a camera on board saw a dust planet from the Red Planet crossing Jezero crater.
Engineers on the Perseverance the mission saw the whirlwind in the distance from the images captured by one of the rover’s cameras while the dust came behind the robber’s robot arm. NASA has published footage of the dust devil, but has not calculated its size or speed.
“Spotted a dust devil. You can see it in the distance behind my robotic arm in this improved / processed view. The dust devil moves right to left and creates whirlwind dust in its path,” said representatives of the Perseverance mission wrote in a tweet late Tuesday (March 16).
Related: Where can you find the latest Mars photos from NASA’s Perseverance Rover?
A dust devil spotted. You can see it in the distance behind my robot arm in this enhanced / processed view. The dust devil moves right to left, creating whirlwinds of dust in its path. pic.twitter.com/t18DxdcSTw16 March 2021
As you can see in this enhanced Space.com video (which includes sound obtained earlier in the mission), the dust devil moves from right to left and starts at the far right of the animation. Perseverance first landed on Mars on February 18 and spent about 25 Red Planet days, called ‘sols’, on the surface.
Dust Devils happens on Earth as well as the Red Planet. These rotating air columns are made visible from the dirt they kick from the ground. On earth, dust mites usually form on clear days when the soil picks up a lot of heat from the sun. Under the right conditions, heated air can begin to rotate close to the surface as it continues to rise through smaller sections of cooler air.
March is approaching aphelion, if it is the furthest in its orbit from the sun, but it is clear that solar energy is still strong enough to create dust devils. And scientists have seen devils of aphelium dust before: during the 2012 aphelion, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted a relatively colossal dust devil at 800 meters altitude and 30 meters in diameter. The camera’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera is even available a swarm of dust devils spotted in 2015.
In fact, spacecraft as old as the Viking missions of the 1970s saw dust devils. But because the phenomena are fleeting, missions sometimes have to wait many years to spot one. NASA’s event did not see a dust devil until 2010, about seven years in his mission. His twin engraver, Spirit, has a amazing video of dust devils raced across the surface in a group in 2005, about two years into the duo’s Mars Exploration Rover mission.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.