NASA rover captures giant dust devil devouring smaller one on Mars
NASA's Perseverance rover captured images of a Martian dust devil consuming a smaller one on the surface of the red planet.
Dust devils are "swirling, sometimes towering columns of air and dust," NASA said in a news release, and are common on Mars. They are formed by rising and rotating columns of warm air that are heated by contact with the planet's surface.
The Perseverance rover, which has been on the surface of Mars since 2021, was on the western rim of the planet's Jezero Crater when it spotted the dust devils from a little over half a mile away. The rover took a series of images on January 25 that NASA turned into a video to show the movement of the columns.
The larger dust devil was about 210 feet wide. The smaller one was only about 16 feet wide, NASA said.
"Convective vortices — aka dust devils — can be rather fiendish," said Mark Lemmon, a Perseverance scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, in the news release. "These mini-twisters wander the surface of Mars, picking up dust as they go and lowering the visibility in their immediate area. If two dust devils happen upon each other, they can either obliterate one another or merge, with the stronger one consuming the weaker."
The dust devils are usually short-lived, no matter their size, Lemmon added.
"If you feel bad for the little devil in our latest video, it may give you some solace to know the larger perpetrator most likely met its own end a few minutes later," said Lemmon. "Dust devils on Mars only last about 10 minutes."
Two other dust devils are visible in the background of the images, to the left and center.
Dust devils play a significant role in weather patterns on Mars, and indicate atmospheric conditions including wind directions and speed, NASA said. They are responsible for about half the dust in the Martian atmosphere. Scientists can't predict when dust devils will appear, NASA said in the news release, so the rover routinely monitors for them in all directions.
NASA's Viking orbiters were the first spacecraft to photograph Martian dust devils, during the 1970s. In the 90s, NASA's Pathfinder mission imaged one whirlwind from the planet's surface.
Perseverance has imaged the whirlwinds on many occasions, including one incident in September 2021 when multiple dust devils were spotted on the floor of the Jezero Crater. The rover has also used its microphone to capture the sound of dust devils.
