What noise does a dust devil make on Mars? By accident, a swirling tower of red dust passed exactly overhead when a NASA rover’s microphone was on, recording the noise.
It lasts for roughly 10 seconds and includes hundreds of dust particles pinging on the Perseverance rover in addition to rumbling gusts of up to 25 mph (40 kph). The original audio was provided by scientists on Tuesday.
According to the researchers, it sounds surprisingly similar to dust devils on Earth, albeit quieter due to Mars’ thin atmosphere, which produces more subdued sounds and less ferocious wind.
According to Naomi Murdoch of the University of Toulouse, the study’s lead author, the dust devil passed over Perseverance swiftly last year, which accounts for the audio’s brief duration. The parked rover’s navigation camera was taking pictures at the same time that its weather-monitoring device was gathering information.
According to co-author German Martinez of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, “Persy totally caught it red-handed.”
Photographed for decades at Mars but never heard until now, dust devils are common at the red planet. This one was in the average range: at least 400 feet (118 meters) tall and 80 feet (25 meters) across, traveling at 16 feet (5 meters) per second.
The microphone picked up 308 dust pings as the dust devil whipped by, said Murdoch, who helped build it.
Given that the rover’s SuperCam microphone is turned on for less than three minutes every few days, Murdoch said it was “definitely luck” that the dust devil appeared when it did on Sept. 27, 2021. She estimates there was just a 1-in-200 chance of capturing dust-devil audio.
Of the 84 minutes collected in its first year, there’s “only one dust devil recording,” she wrote in an email from France.
This same microphone on Perseverance’s mast provided the first sounds from Mars — namely the Martian wind — soon after the rover landed in February 2021. It followed up with audio of the rover driving around and its companion helicopter, little Ingenuity, flying nearby, as well as the crackle of the rover’s rock-zapping lasers, the main reason for the microphone.
These recordings allow scientists to study the Martian wind, atmospheric turbulence and now dust movement as never before, Murdoch said. The results”“demonstrate just how valuable acoustic data can be in space exploration.”
On the prowl for rocks that might contain signs of ancient microbial life, Perseverance has collected 18 samples so far at Jezero Crater, once the scene of a river delta. NASA plans to return these samples to Earth a decade from now. The helicopter Ingenuity has logged 36 flights, the longest lasting almost three minutes.
