Good news in terms of climate study MarsThe “Perseverance” rover managed to record the sound of the “dust devil” phenomenon, in a very important precedent that will help to better understand the climate of the Red Planet, according to a study whose results were published on Tuesday 13 December .
These so-called “convective eddies,” similar to the sand eddies that affect some deserts on Earth, are a major atmospheric phenomenon on Mars, an arid planet with a very thin atmosphere.
And this atmospheric phenomenon is formed when there is a large temperature difference between the ground and the air, and often gets in the way of robotic exploration missions sent by humans, and the Jezero crater, where the mobile robot “Perseverance” has been in in operation since February 2021, it has witnessed many of these phenomena, but this vehicle produced by the US space agency (NASAShe hadn’t been able to monitor her own voice directly before.
Luckily, on Sept. 27, a 118-metre-high whirlwind passed over the robot’s head and its microphone-equipped ‘SuperCam’ instrument recorded the first sound from Mars as it descended. The data reached Earth a few days later.
“When we realized that we had camera images as well as weather and acoustic sensor data at the site, we felt like we had hit the jackpot,” said the lead author of the study, the results of which were published today. in Nature Communications journal, Naomi Murdock.
“We hear the wind associated with the vortex, the moment it comes, then everything disappears because we are in the eye of the vortex, and then the sound comes back again as the microphone passes through the second wall,” added the planetary scientist al Isai- Supero Institute in Toulouse, France, where the microphone was designed.
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The microphone, in particular, transmitted a precise clicking sound that allows “particle counting” to be able to study the structure and behavior of the dust.
“The dust cycle on Mars and in the sky plays a very important role in climate, just like the water cycle on Earth,” said Naomi Murdock.
The science officer of the “Supercam” instrument, Sylvester Morris, who participated in the study, indicated that the analysis of the dust allows us to “explore the interactions” between the Earth and this very soft atmosphere, which was denser billions of years ago , allowing the presence of liquid water on the surface.
These new data would explain how dust is kicked up from the surface of Mars, something scientists don’t yet know.
“In some areas, the vortexes come through, kick up the dust and clean up,” said Naomi Murdock Solar panels incoming robots.
In other regions, cyclones pass without raising dust, for an unknown reason, and “it’s just air in motion”, as at the site where the American probe “Insight” operates, whose solar panels are “covered in dust” because could not benefit from these natural suction devices. .
Elucidating this mechanism may help develop graphical models of “dust devils” to better predict them. On a larger scale, this could make it possible to predict huge dust storms that could cover the entire planet, similar to the scenario in the 2015 science fiction film “The Martian”, which the scientist called “unrealistic”.
“We are improving our weather model, which is important for the maintenance of our vehicles and for future human exploration missions,” said Sylvester Morris.
As for the contribution of these results to the search for traces of extraterrestrial life, the physicist underlined that “one might think that studying the climate of Mars today has nothing to do with the search for traces of life billions of years ago, but the The question is complementary because the history of Mars has witnessed serious climatic changes that have made it go from a hot and humid climate (and therefore suitable for the birth of life) to a completely dry and cold planet.
