The stillness that emerges from the images that come from Mars does not correspond to the reality of the planet: it is a dead but active landscape. And now, for the first time, NASA and an international consortium of scientists have managed to capture the sound of a Martian dust swirl. The constant frequency of these eddies is a challenge for rovers sent there by humanity, as they can be damaged when sand seeps into their electronic innards.
The recorded whirlpool occurred in the Martian Jezero crater in September 2021, where the robot is stationed. perseverancesince last year, within the mission to mars 2020 actively searching for evidence of liquid water millions of years ago and, perhaps, life. This meteorological phenomenon reached 118 meters in height and 25 meters in diameter—ten times larger than the NASA vehicle—and passed through it completely.
“We had a one in 200 chance of recording it,” says smiling planetologist Naomi Murdoch, of the Higher Institute of Aeronautics and Space from the University of Toulouse in France, who is leading the research. “There was a lot of planning, but also luck: the microphone takes measurements for just under 3 minutes and a priori It is unknown when a dust devil (dust devil, in English)”, he admits by videoconference.
The recording of the event and the measurements of the data are published today in the scientific journal nature communications and the article is signed by several Spanish scientists. One of the coatures of him, the physical Ricardo Huesofrom the Planetary Sciences Group of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), celebrates the finding: “It is a unique event, the sound of a dust eddy had not been recorded before, we did not think we were going to capture it with all the instruments at the same time.
In charge of the analysis of the work on atmospheric pressure, Hueso summarizes the importance of this unprecedented record: “The findings may improve our understanding of changes on the surface, dust storms and climate variability on Mars, which may have implications for future space exploration.
the martian rover perseverance is a technical prodigy that had international participation throughout its development, such as the construction of the environmental measurement sensors (MEDA) at the CSIC Center for Astrobiology. The physical Alvaro Vicente-Retortillo, also a participant in the study, stresses that what makes this discovery something special is having managed to record the chance encounter multisensorily: wind, pressure, air temperature, solar and thermal radiation of the surface, relative humidity of the environment, as well as the images of the whirlwind. “MEDA provides very valuable information to better understand the properties of dust on Mars, which is important due to its implications for mission performance and, in the long term, for human health,” Vicente-Retortillo details.
The landscape of Mars is similar to what we saw during the intrusion of the Saharawi haze on the Peninsula at the beginning of the year, that haze
Víctor Apéstigue, physicist from the National Institute of Aerospace Technology
Dust is constant in the tenuous Martian atmosphere, its entire climate is conditioned by its high concentration of CO₂. “A landscape similar to what we saw during the intrusion of the Sahrawi haze in the Peninsula at the beginning of the year, that mist,” compares the Physicist Victor Apéstigue. And add him too Physicist Daniel Toledo: “On Mars the greenhouse effect is constant, dust is one of its main agents, which causes solar radiation to be trapped within the atmosphere.” Both scientists belong to the group of specialists that controls some of the vehicle’s sensors. perseverance from the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA) in Torrejón de Ardoz (Madrid), another center attached to the NASA mission on Mars and partner in this research.
The rapid oxidation caused by Martian dust in the instruments that NASA sends to the neighboring planet has historically been a constant problem that scientists have faced, say INTA. Another reason, they add, for studying the behavior of eddies.
The cutting-edge technology of perseverance It has been able “even to distinguish the impacts of the grains of sand from the sound of the air in the microphone on Mars, and that is in the hundreds,” says lead researcher Murdoch with satisfaction. And he points out that the results open the door to being able to analyze the planets of the Solar System from new angles for future manned missions: “Since we arrived on Mars in February and recorded the first sounds, we have not been disappointed: the sound information of another planet has the potential to contribute to scientific knowledge”.
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