Perseverance captures the majestic “Dust Devil” – DW – 04/10/2023

The wanderer NASA Perseverance She captured extraordinary images of an impressive vortex, also known as a ‘dust devil’, dancing Surface of Mars.

On August 30, during the 899th sol, the Perseverance rover’s navigation cameras captured They recorded this vortex On a height called Thorofare Ridge. According to NASA, This tornado was longer than an average-sized tornado in the United States and five times taller than the Empire State Building.

In a press release, NASA and the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported that the small tornado was captured for about 84 seconds as it formed over nearby hills, a few kilometers away. According to the agency’s calculations, this tornado was moving at a speed of approximately 20 kilometers per hour, was about 61 meters wide, and reached an amazing height of about 2 kilometers, although the top of the tornado could not be seen due to limited video. .

“We don’t see the top of dust devil,“But the shadow it casts gives us a good indication of its height,” said Mark Lemon, a planetary scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and a member of the Perseverance science team. “Most of them are vertical columns.” If this dust devil was configured this way, its shadow would indicate that it was about 2 km away [1,2 millas] long”.

“Dust devils” on Mars

These “dust devils” are formed on Mars due to processes similar to those that occur on Earth. Sunlight heats the Martian soil, causing air near the surface to rise and cool air to fall to fill the empty space.

Under the right conditions, a vortex forms and the air rotates as it rises. When the Earth is covered in enough light particles, such as dust or sand, they are drawn into the whirlwind, making them visible before settling elsewhere where the demon loses its power.

Unlike terrestrial tornadoes, which can only grow as large as the clouds covering them, there are no restrictions on the height of a dust tornado on Mars. However, in general, Martian dust hurricanes are weaker and shorter than their Earthly counterparts, so the recently imaged hurricane is an exception to this rule.

Researchers are still unsure why this dust tornado grows so loud, but the phenomenon provides valuable information about the Martian atmosphere and atmospheric processes on the Red Planet.

According to a study Published in the magazine Icarus In 2018, it was estimated that on average per day there could be at least one “dust devil” per square kilometer on Mars, which equates to about 145 million per day. This suggests that dust devils may be the main transporters of dust through the Martian atmosphere, playing a crucial role in dust dynamics on the Red Planet.

Edited by Felipe Espinoza Wang.