NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Dust has seen the devil moving through the parsed red planet landscape.
On Uri Gust on, Curiosity photographed the Dust Devil, finding a spectral feature dancing on the border between dark and light slides within a Mars-mile-width (144 kilometers). Gail Crater.
Members of the Curiosity team said it was no surprise that these dry whirlwinds, which we also get here on Earth, are rising inside the pit these days.
“It’s almost summer in the Gail Crater, which keeps us on a period of strong surface heat that lasts from early spring to mid-summer,” said Claire Newman, an atmospheric scientist at Arizona-based company Ollis Research. Wrote in a mission update Wednesday (August 26). (Gail lies about degrees in the direction of the Mangalian equator.)
Related: Awesome photos of Mars by NASA’s Curiosity rover (latest images)
“Warming a strong surface produces strong breeding and sensitive vortices, including rapid winds around low-pressure cores,” Newman wrote. “If those vortices are strong enough, they can raise dust from the surface and be visible as ‘dust devils’ that we can image from our cameras.”
Dust devils are usually quite dizzy, so curiosity photos must often be processed before features appear, Newman added. But Aug Gust 9 whirlwind also appeared in the image of the raw, unlimited rover.
Curiosity’s latest activities include the study of such dust devils, using the rover’s camera and its weather nboard weather station, Newman wrote. But 2. The main science of the billion 1 billion mission focuses on the analysis of Martian rock and soil to learn more about the planet’s climatic evolution and its past ability to support life.
Shortly after landing inside the Gale Crater in August 2012, Curiosity’s observations allowed scientists to determine that, billions of years ago, a Potential livable lake and flow system. In September 2014, a car-sized robot landed at the base of Mount Sharp, which is 4.4 miles (.5..5 km) high in the Martian sky from the center of Gail. Since then, Curiosity has been hovering over the foothills, reading a lot of stones for clues about how the Red Planet changed over time.
Curiosity is seen Dust devils on Mars before, And so are Rover’s robotic cousins. NASA Opportunity and Spirit Rovers Features photograph, For example, and the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has given us Eye views of alien birds.
Mike W. Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Carl Tate), a book about the quest for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @Mamildld. Follow us on Twitter @speed.com or Facebook.
