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Following its seven month long journey through our solar system, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on the red planet Mars back in February 2021. Since then, it’s been hard at work capturing breathtaking footage.
Recently, the rover captured footage of a massive dust devil measuring 1.2 miles high, providing scientists with valuable insight into the Martian weather from 230 million miles away. This finding could lead to additional breakthroughs as we continue to explore our neighboring planet.
A dust devil is a vertical column of hot air and particles that can form during warmer temperatures when rising cells of warm air mix with descending columns of cooler air, carrying dust and debris along for the ride.
On Earth, these are usually much smaller than those found on Mars due to its lower gravity and abundance of dust.
The dusty vortex was about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) away from the six-wheeled rover when it was spotted moving east to west at Thorofare Ridge, located on the western rim of Jezero Crater. It was captured by one of Perseverance’s ‘Navcams’ – black-and-white navigational cameras mounted at the top of its long neck – which use visible light to gather panoramic 3D imagery.
Although only 387 feet (118 meters) were visible in the camera frame, scientists used the dust devil’s shadow to estimate its full height as 1.2 miles (2 kilometers).
This new footage offers exciting insight into what conditions might be like on Mars while also providing evidence for further exploration and research about our neighboring planet’s atmosphere and climate system from so far away here on Earth.
Not only that but this discovery could lead us closer towards unlocking secrets about potential ancient rivers or bodies of water that may have existed in Jezero Crater many years ago – information that could be locked away in rock samples collected by Perseverance for a highly ambitious retrieval mission between NASA and European Space Agency (ESA).
Unfortunately though, this project is currently stalled due to costs issues and complexities according to recent reports released by NASA’s Institutional Review Board making progress difficult until further developments arise soon.
Full video of the dust devil can be seen here.
