{"id":6682,"date":"2022-12-13T10:05:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-13T14:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/?p=6682"},"modified":"2024-07-24T11:39:45","modified_gmt":"2024-07-24T15:39:45","slug":"scientists-get-first-ever-sound-recording-of-dust-devils-tiny-tornadoes-of-dust-grit-on-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/2022\/Q4\/scientists-get-first-ever-sound-recording-of-dust-devils-tiny-tornadoes-of-dust-grit-on-mars","title":{"rendered":"Scientists get first-ever sound recording of dust devils (tiny tornadoes of dust, grit) on Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. —<\/p> \n

When the rover Perseverance landed on Mars, it was equipped with the first working microphone on the planet\u2019s surface. Scientists have used it to make the first-ever audio recording<\/a> of an extraterrestrial whirlwind.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The study was published in Nature Communications<\/a> by planetary scientist Naomi Murdoch and a team of researchers at the National Higher French Institute of Aeronautics and Space and NASA. Roger Wiens<\/a>, professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences in Purdue University\u2019s College of Science<\/a>, leads the instrument team that made the discovery<\/a>. He is the principal investigator of Perseverance\u2019s SuperCam<\/a>, a suite of tools that comprise the rover\u2019s \u201chead\u201d that includes advanced remote-sensing instruments with a wide range of spectrometers, cameras and the microphone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe can learn a lot more using sound than we can with some of the other tools,\u201d Wiens said. \u201cThey take readings at regular intervals. The microphone lets us sample, not quite at the speed of sound, but nearly 100,000 times a second. It helps us get a stronger sense of what Mars is like.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The microphone is not on continuously; it records for about three minutes every couple of days. Getting the whirlwind recording, Wiens said, was lucky, though not necessarily unexpected. In the Jezero Crater, where Perseverance landed, the team has observed evidence of nearly 100 dust devils \u2013 tiny tornadoes of dust and grit \u2013 since the rover\u2019s landing. This is the first time the microphone was on when one passed over the rover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sound recording of the dust devil, taken together with air pressure readings and time-lapse photography, help scientists understand the Martian atmosphere and weather.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe could watch the pressure drop, listen to the wind, then have a little bit of silence that is the eye of the tiny storm, and then hear the wind again and watch the pressure rise,\u201d Wiens said. It all happened in a few seconds. \u201cThe wind is fast \u2014 about 25 miles per hour, but about what you would see in a dust devil on Earth. The difference is that the air pressure on Mars is so much lower that the winds, while just as fast, push with about 1% of the pressure the same speed of wind would have back on Earth. It’s not a powerful wind, but clearly enough to loft particles of grit into the air to make a dust devil.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The information indicates that future astronauts will not have to worry about gale-force winds blowing down antennas or habitats \u2014 so future Mark Watneys won\u2019t be left behind<\/a> \u2014 but the wind may have some benefits. The breezes blowing grit off the solar panels of other rovers \u2014 especially Opportunity and Spirit \u2014 may be what helped them last so much longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThose rover teams would see a slow decline in power over a number of days to weeks, then a jump. That was when wind cleared off the solar panels,\u201d Wiens said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lack of such wind and dust devils in the Elysium Planitia where the InSIght mission landed may help explain why that mission is winding down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust like Earth, there is different weather in different areas on Mars,\u201d Wiens said. \u201cUsing all of our instruments and tools, especially the microphone, helps us get a concrete sense of what it would be like to be on Mars.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\n
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\n Writer\/Media contact:<\/strong>\u00a0Brittany Steff,\u00a0bsteff@purdue.edu<\/a>
Source:<\/strong>\u00a0Roger Wiens,\u00a0rwiens@purdue.edu<\/a>\u00a0 <\/p>\n <\/div>\n

\n
\n

Note to journalists:<\/p>\n

\n A\u00a0video link<\/a>\u00a0is available to media who have an Associated Press subscription.\u00a0
<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — When the rover Perseverance landed on Mars, it was equipped with the first working microphone on the planet\u2019s surface. Scientists have used it to make the first-ever audio recording of an extraterrestrial whirlwind. The study was published in Nature<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"department":[58,32],"source":[29],"purdue_today_topic":[66],"coauthors":[77],"class_list":["post-6682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","department-purdue-moves","department-science","source-purdue-news","purdue_today_topic-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6719,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6682\/revisions\/6719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6682"},{"taxonomy":"department","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/department?post=6682"},{"taxonomy":"source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/source?post=6682"},{"taxonomy":"purdue_today_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/purdue_today_topic?post=6682"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}