Sound of a dust devil on Mars recorded for first time

The sound of a dust satan on Mars was recorded for the primary time as the attention of the whirlwind swept excessive of NASA’s Perseverance rover, a brand new research stated Tuesday.

“We hit the jackpot” when the rover’s microphone picked up the noise made by the dust devil overhead, the research’s lead writer Naomi Murdoch informed AFP.

The researchers hope the recording will assist to raised perceive the climate and local weather on Mars, together with how its arid floor and skinny environment could as soon as have supported life.

Widespread throughout Mars, dust devils are short-lived whirlwinds loaded with dust that kind when there’s a main distinction between floor and air temperatures.

They’re a typical characteristic within the Jezero crater, the place the Perseverance rover has been operational since February 2021—however it had by no means earlier than managed to document audio of one in all them.

By probability on September 27, 2021, a dust satan 118 metres (390 toes) excessive and 25 metres large handed instantly over the rover.

This time the microphone on the rover’s SuperCam—which beforehand recorded the primary ever audio from the Martian floor—managed to catch the muffled, whirring sounds of the dust satan.

“We hear the wind related to the dust satan, the second it arrives, then nothing as a result of we’re within the eye of the vortex,” stated Murdoch, a planetary researcher at France’s ISAE-SUPAERO space analysis institute, the place the SuperCam’s microphone was designed.

Then the sound returns “when the microphone passes by means of the second wall” of the dust satan, she added.

A dust satan thriller

The impression of the dust made “tac tac tac” sounds which is able to let researchers rely the variety of particles to check the whirlwind’s construction and behavior, she stated.

It might additionally assist resolve a thriller that has puzzled scientists. On some components of Mars, “whirlwinds move by sucking up dust, cleansing the solar panels of rovers alongside the way in which,” Murdoch stated.

However in different areas, the whirlwinds transfer by with out kicking up a lot dust. “They’re simply shifting air,” Murdoch stated, including that “we do not know why”.

For instance, the solar panels of NASA’s InSight lander are “lined in dust” as a result of it’s positioned at a spot the place it can’t make the most of these pure vacuum cleaners, she stated.

Understanding why this occurs might assist scientists construct a mannequin of dust devils so they may predict the place the whirlwinds may strike subsequent.

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It might even make clear the good dust storms that sweep throughout the planet, famously depicted within the 2015 science-fiction movie “The Martian”, starring Matt Damon. Nevertheless Murdoch famous that the violence of the dust storms proven within the movie was “unrealistic”.

Sylvestre Maurice, a planetary scientist and co-author of the research printed within the journal Nature Communications, stated that analysing Martian dust makes it doable to “discover the interactions” between the bottom and the extraordinarily skinny environment.

The environment was a lot thicker billions of years in the past, which allowed for the presence of life-sustaining liquid water, stated Maurice, who additionally works on the SuperCam.

“You may assume that learning the Martian local weather at this time is unrelated to the seek for traces of life from billions of years in the past,” he stated.

“However it’s all half of a complete, as a result of the historical past of Mars is one in all excessive local weather change from a damp, scorching planet to a very arid and chilly planet.”

© 2022 AFP