Scientists have found that dust tornadoes over 387 feet (118 meters) high ripple along the surface of Mars.
Known as “dust devils,” these whirlwinds reach speeds of 25 miles per hour (40 kilometers per hour), blowing pebbles and particles as they go.
And NASA’s rover took the first-ever audio recording of this phenomenon, which provides insight into the atmosphere and weather on the Red Planet. This could help engineers as they design future Mars missions, as the bombardment of dust has implications for the instruments we send.
Perseverance landed in the Jezero crater on Mars on February 18, 2021, after a nearly seven-month journey through space.
Since then, he has been looking for ancient biomarkers in the Martian mud, which could indicate the presence of alien life there. It comes equipped with 23 cameras that help it navigate, assess its safety and gather visual data on near and far objects. One such camera is the “Supercam” – a suite of instruments on Perseverance’s “head” that contains scientific instruments, cameras and a microphone.
Sensors on landers and other rovers have picked up vibrations on the surface of Mars in the past, but this microphone is the first of its kind.
It records samples nearly 100,000 times per second, giving researchers a stronger sense of environmental conditions on Mars.
“We can learn a lot more with sound than we can with some other tools,” said Dr. Roger Wiens, SuperCam’s principal investigator.
Scientists at NASA and the French National Institute of Aeronautics and Space used the microphone to make the first-ever recording of an extraterrestrial dust devil.
Prior to this recording, data collected by other Perseverance sensors showed that more than 100 of these tornadoes had passed over the rover since touchdown.
However, since the microphone only works for three minutes each day, the dust devil’s voice wasn’t captured for the first time until September 27, 2021.
You can clearly hear the wind blowing, with a faint crackle of grain bouncing off the rover’s exterior.
In addition to the audio recording, Perseverance took air pressure readings and time-lapse photos during the encounter.
The researchers hope that the microphone will be able to capture the sound of dust devils that appear in different geological locations on Mars.
This will allow them to compare data from different recordings to see how the Martian landscape affects their properties.