NASA’s Mars rover “Perseverance” recently sent astonishing images back to Earth as part of its mission. They show a so-called dust devil, a small-scale cyclone that is formed by rotating warm air and drags grains of sand away from the surface of the Red Planet.
The black-and-white images, now published on the US space agency NASA’s website, were taken on August 30 at the western rim of the Jezero crater. Researchers from the ‘Perseverance’ team calculated that the small hurricane was about four kilometers away from the rover and was moving from east to west at a speed of about 19 km/h.
The rover used one of its navigation cameras to take 21 images of the dust devil from a distance of about four kilometers, which the “Perseverance” scientists compiled into a video (see above) sped up by a factor of 20.
According to NASA experts, the dust devil was about 200 feet wide. And although the top part is outside the frame, they were also able to determine the approximate height. “Although we can’t see the tip of the dust devil, the shadow it casts gives us a good indication of its height,” Mark Lemmon of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said on NASA’s website.
The mini cyclone was two kilometers high
“Most (dust devils, take note) are vertical columns,” Lemmon explains. “If this dust devil is configured this way, its shadow would indicate it is about two kilometers high.”
Dust devils – they are also observed on Earth – are created when the surface of Mars is heated by solar radiation. The mini cyclones kick up sand and dust, which then seems to dance like a little ghost (hence their English name, dust devils).
Rover searches for microbial life on Mars
The rover, launched from Cape Canaveral in July 2020, landed in a dry lake called “Jezero Crater” on February 18, 2021, in a risky maneuver that lasted several minutes. The rover, which cost about €2.2 billion, was designed and built over about eight years and is intended to look for traces of ancient microbial life on Mars and investigate the planet’s climate and geology.
Camera technology from Austria
The robot (photo), which weighs about 1,000 kilograms and is the size of a small car, has seven scientific instruments, 23 cameras and a laser on board. Research institutions from Graz and Vienna have provided software for one of the cameras. As a result, their images are assessed three-dimensionally in a completely new way.
Source: Krone
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