NASA has sent its Perseverance rover to Mars Lake Crater to search for past hints of life. While there, the car-sized robot witnessed hundreds of energetic dust devils.
It turns out that the Jezero crater – a region that planetary scientists suspect was once crowded with water – is an extremely dynamic, dusty world. “Jezero Crater may be one of the most active sources of dust on the planet,” said Manuel de la Torre Juarez, a NASA scientist working on the Perseverance mission.
The Space Agency recently released footage of this strong, spinning activity of the dusty devil in the crater, which was filmed in July 2021. You can see many dusty devils spinning simultaneously in the landscape, both in the foreground and in the red hills. in the distance.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI
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At least four of these vortices pass near the rover each day. They are formed when the earth becomes warmer than air, heating the air above it. Ascending currents rise, while cooler air then sinks downward, creating vertically circulating air. However, the dust devils on Mars can be much larger than those on Earth.
Sometimes the Perseverance rover also notices gusts of wind raising clouds of dust in the Martian sky. “The largest of these created a massive cloud covering 1.5 square miles (4 square kilometers),” NASA said.
Sometimes large regional or planetary dust storms can cover the red planet. Understanding how vigorous dust activity occurs in Jezero Crater (perhaps the rough surface helps the wind lift dust into the air) can help planning missions anticipate these intense weather events.
Sometimes dust storms can be so thick that they block sunlight from reaching the surface, turning day into night. This is a serious problem for robotic research missions – or perhaps future human missions – that rely on sunlight for energy. The dust was so relentless that it eventually deprived NASA’s legendary Opportunity rover of light and the robot ran out. The engineers could not turn the robot back on.
But about 2 billion years ago, Mars may not have been the infinitely dusty Earth it is today. The water was flowing on the surface, and now Perseverance is looking for evidence of an ancient life that may have inhabited this once humid world.
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