NASA Rover Spots Spellbinding Trio of Dust Devils Dancing Across Mars
Come on, baby, let's do the twist times three.
These raw images from March 7 show the Perseverance's landscape view from one of its navigation cameras.
Mars reminds me of spring in New Mexico. Every time I see a dusty whirlwind ripping across the high desert on Earth, I think of the same thing happening on Mars. Kudos to Kevin Gill, space image processor extraordinaire, for sharing a recent trio of dust devils on Mars in a tweet on Thursday.
A tri of dust devils in Jezero Crater caught on camera by @NASAPersevere on sol 372 pic.twitter.com/bFd9BMp24D
— Kevin M. Gill (@kevinmgill) March 10, 2022
The images, which Gill tweaked and put together into a short video, come from NASA's Perseverance rover on March 7, which works out to "sol 372" for the mission. A sol is a solar day on Mars, so sol 372 was Percy's 372nd Mars day in the Jezero Crater, the former lakebed it now calls home.
I dug back through the sol 372 raw images from Percy, but I don't have a keen enough eye to find the whirlwinds in the distance. If you stare at space shots as much as Gill does, I imagine you develop a talent for spotting subtle changes on other planets.
Mars is notoriously windy and dust devils are a common occurrence there. NASA's rovers sometimes dedicate camera time to staring off into the distance to look for them. Spacecraft in residence at Mars can also see their tracks from orbit.
Gill added a little color commentary to the dust devil Twitter thread, describing the scene as looking like "a desolate hell hole." He's got a point, but I see those swirling columns as dancers that share their moves with their Earth counterparts. Our two planets might have gone in very different directions, but I see a bit of my own home reflected in that alien landscape.