Dec. 13 (UPI) — NASA’s Perseverance rover recorded audio of a dust devil on Mars, researchers reported Tuesday.
While Perseverance has detected 90 dust devils, the incident recorded on Sept. 27, 2021, was the only case where the rover’s microphone was on.
Scientists analyzed the audio to calculate the wind speed based on the intensity of the gusts and determined that 308 individual particles had impacted, according to the report in Nature Communications.
Perseverance’s NavCam recorded images of the dust devil and the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer recorded pressure measurements. The data collected allowed scientists to determine that the dust devil was 82 feet wide, 387 feet tall and was moving at a speed of 17 feet per second.
The data shows that the dust devil had more dust concentration in the center of the vortex, which is unusual because the pressure inside a storm system is usually low.
“We aren’t entirely sure why the dust has accumulated in the center, but it may be because the dust devil is still in its initial phase of formation.” Naomi Murdoch, a planetary scientist at the Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace at the University of Toulouse and lead author of the study, told Space.com.
The Perseverance rover landed on Mars in February 2021, at a location on Mars now dedicated to Hugo Prize-winning science fiction author Octavia E. Butler.
“We still do not fully understand how, exactly, dust is lifted from the surface of Mars,” said Murdoch.
