Almost 2 km high: Martian dust devil caught by NASA rover

NASA’s Perseverance rover has captured video footage of an almost two kilometre tall dust devil moving across the Jezero Crater on Mars.

Footage captured on August 30, Perseverance’s 899th Martian day on the planet, shows the whirlwind moving east to west along the rim of the Jezero Crater.

Video footage released by NASA was sped up by 20 times and shows the dust devil travelling at 12 mph.

Although only the base is visible in the footage, Scientists estimate that the dust devil was 1.93 kilometres in height based on its shadow, and around 61 metres in width.

These spinning vortices also form on Earth, appearing when rising warm air clashes with descending columns of colder air. Unlike on our planet, Martian dust devils grow much larger but remain relatively weak.

It is currently summer in Mars’ Northern Hemisphere, where Perseverance is located, a time when dust devils are more prevalent on our Martian neighbour. Despite this, it is hard to forecast their formation, therefore the rover routinely monitors all directions.

In December 2022, NASA released an audio clip of a dust devil captured three months prior at Jezero Crater. This was the first audio recording of a dust devil on the planet.

The rover’s microphones are only active eight times a month, recording 167 seconds at a time. A great deal of luck was involved with the historic capture.

Perseverance is part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission and landed on Mars in February 2021 after a seven month journey. Its core aim is to find signs of past microbial life, collecting rock and soil samples, and to prepare for future human exploration.

It also carried the Ingenuity rotocopter which made the first ever controlled flight on another planet in April 2021.