STORY – A dust devil allowed the rover to record the wind on the Red Planet, helping to understand its meteorology.
Trapped in a dust devil at least 118 meters high and 25 wide, the Perseverance rover not only emerged unscathed, but it also managed to capture the sound of this vortex, we learned in mid-December. works published in Nature Communications. A recording that allows us to better understand the mechanism of these Martian weather events. “This is the first time that we have recorded such an event.explains Naomi Murdoch, planetary scientist at Isae-Supaero (Toulouse) and first author of the article. What is particularly interesting is that in addition to the sound, we have the weather sensors on Perseverance as well as its cameras. We were able to put it all together and we were able to characterize this vortex very well.”
Mars is usually a silent planet. Not only because no living being lives there, but also because it is difficult for sound to propagate there: the atmosphere is thin, so there are few particles that enter…
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