NASA’s Mars rover approaches the surface of the Red Planet, catching a haunting ‘Dust Devil’
- The Curiosity rover has been moving towards Gail Pit on Mars since 2012
- The pit is currently going through its windy season which will stimulate the dusty soil
- The surface of the heat caused a wind vortex that caught the soil and created dust devils
- A dust devil was captured on a series of images by NASA Curiosity rover
A new series of images sent to Earth by NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars shows a spinning ‘dust devil’ as it orbits the surface of the Red Planet.
The NASA Curiosity rover has been crossing the Gail Pit for the past eight years, conducting experiments and sending stunning still images to Earth.
Gail Crater is going through its ‘wind season’, which excites the dust demons – which is due to the fast wind vortices that grow dust from the ground – captured by Curiosity.
According to NASA researchers, studying the weather events on Mars that we can also see on Earth can help us understand the asons on the red planet.
NASA has not confirmed the size of the Dust Devil because it was too far for accurate measurements, but has seen some of the spacecraft orbiting reach a height of 12 miles.
The top is a moving image shared by NASA showing the Dust Devil – illuminated with a red circle. Below is the Curiosity rover that sent images of the spinning vortex to Earth
It’s almost summer on Tuesday and this is causing the surface of the gale pit to heat up – this heating lasts from early spring to mid-summer.
When the surface is hot enough, it causes convection and in turn causes vortices formed by fast winds that whip around low-pressure cores – just like on Earth.
When the wind is strong enough – as has happened this year – it can lift soil from the surface and create dust demons that can be seen on many of the images sent back to Earth by the Curiosity rover.
“We often have to process these images, magnifying what has changed between them,” wrote NASA scientist Claire Newman.
‘This dust devil was so impressive that – if you look closely – you can see him moving to the right, even in raw images, on the border of dark and light slides.’
Dust devils on Earth just like Mars and is best when the terrain is relatively flat and dry and the air is warmer than its surface.
They are actually very common on Mars – but really rare to see in motion because they are relatively short-lived and Curiosity only sends static images.
We know about them because the jigsaw and orbit spacecraft leave these dust demons behind instead of being in motion.
The team had to get the curiosity to take multiple images of the same region between five and 30 minutes to capture the Dust Devil movie.
On Earth the team then worked together to create a moving video stitching images that allowed them to track its path.
Observing their speed can provide information about the speed of the dust devil, where they start and how they evolve.
‘Seeing how fast they are moving and in what direction they also tell us about the wind speed and direction of their background,’ Newman said.
‘We’ve also made sure to take meteorological measures throughout each movie, if we picture a vortex in it that is close enough to measure its pressure drop, impact on local temperature or even UV radiation, if it is dusty enough to partially block. Sun. ‘
NASA has captured images of the Dust Devils orbiting the Red Planet from space – but this is a static image rather than a motion picture. This one reached a height of 12 miles
Dust Devils also form on Earth. This is the moment when a team of workers from Japan, Indonesia started dumping Lokash waste in flour at a food processing plant.
Observing Dust Devils is not the primary mission of the atmospheric team, their goal is to drill and make sample materials as part of a ‘wet chemistry’ experiment.
This involves transforming less volatile organic chemistry into forms that can be detected by the instrument on the Curiosity rover.
While drilling and examining samples, the camera on Curiosity can be used to observe and capture images of the Dust Devil.
They also examined the dust that appeared on top of the rover in the pit.
“Dust measurements will help us track regional dust activity on Mars, which has been observed from surface and orbit in recent years,” Newman wrote.
Curiosity is currently the only moving rover on the Red Planet, but diligently currently has a flight between the worlds and is due to land on Mars in early 2021.
Full details of the search can be found on the NASA Mars Mission Updates blog.
NASA’s Mars Curiosity River was launched in 2011 and improved our understanding of the red plant.
The Mars Curiosity rover was initially launched on November 26, 2011 from Cape Canaveral, an American Air Force station in Florida.
Million after traveling 350 million miles (606060 million kilometers), £ 1.5 billion ($. Billion billion) research vehicle landing 1.5. Reached a distance of 1.5 miles (4.4 km).
After a successful landing on August 6, 2012, the rover has traveled about 11 miles (18 km).
It was launched on the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft and the rover accounted for 23 percent of the total mission mass.
With on board 0 kg (1 lb) scientific instruments, the rover weighs a total of 999999 kg (1,982 lb) and is powered by a plutonium fuel source.
The Rover 9 is 2.9 meters (.2.5 feet) wide and 2..9 meters (.5.9 feet) wide.
Mars’s Jigsaw rover could initially support Earth life, contain liquid water, study the weather, and Mars’s geology, active for more than 2,000 days, had a two-year mission to gather information to answer.
Initially the purpose of the rover was to have a two-year mission to gather information to find out if Earth could support life, have liquid water, study the weather and the geology of Mars.
Due to its success, the mission has been extended indefinitely and is now active for more than 2,000 days.
The rover has a number of scientific devices on board, including the MST stock that has two cameras and can take high resolution images and videos in real color.
So far in the car-sized robot voyage he has encountered an ancient strip where liquid water flowed, even after years of knowing that a nearby area called Yaloknev Bay was part of a lake that supported microbial life.
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