The first recording of a dust storm on the surface of Mars reveals the 119m high dust vortex that “swallowed” the Perseverance robot in September 2021.

Naomi Murdoch, a physicist at the French National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (ISAE-SUPAERO) at the University of Toulouse, and colleagues analyze the sound of dust vortexes, or dust devils, in research published on December 13. in the journal Nature Communications. “We can actually hear the noise of particles colliding with the rover.

The impact sound allows us to count how many dust particles are in the vortex,” said Murdoch.Dust exists throughout the surface and atmosphere of Mars.

The movement of dust both affects the weather and climate on Mars and is also influenced by the environment.

Understanding dust motion is important for modeling Mars’ climate and for planning missions to the planet.

For example, Perseverance’s wind sensor was damaged by dust, and the InSight Lander station was about to shut down due to dust accumulating on solar cells, limiting the amount of electricity available for scientific monitoring.

Dust vortex occurs when warm air near the ground rises and spins, carrying dust with it. Jezero crater, where the Perseverance robot is exploring, regularly appears dust storms.

According to Murdoch et al., the robot’s Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) instrument, which tracks environmental characteristics such as temperature, dust, humidity and wind, recorded at least 91 nearby dust vortexes. But on September 27, 2021, a dust vortex swept over the robot.

Not only did the MEDA device collect data during the tornado impact, Perseverance’s locator camera also took pictures and the SuperCam microphone recorded the event.

Perseverance robot records dust vortex on MarsCombining these three data sources, Murdoch’s team detected a tornado 25m wide, nearly 10 times larger than the robot.

With a height of 119m, this tornado is as tall as a 40-story building. The giant tornado moved at 19km/h with maximum winds of 50km/h.

However, on Mars, the atmosphere is much thinner than on Earth. This means that, even with high winds, due to the number of small particles in the atmosphere, the force of the wind is much less than that of Earth.

In a typical dust vortex, most of the dust is concentrated in the vortex walls. But the dust that collided with the robot came in three separate streams, from the sides of the wall and the dust cloud in the center of the vortex.

Dust accumulating inside the dust vortex is an unusual finding, according to Murdoch.

“At present, we still don’t understand exactly how dust rises from the Martian surface, but it is an important part of modeling both dust vortexes and dust storms.

With the microphone, we were able to directly observe the dust rising and determine the conditions for the process to occur.”