A tornado-like wind occurred on Mars and its sound was successfully captured by the Perseverance rover. Perseverance is the first rover to visit Mars with an embedded microphone. Perseverance has landed since February 2021.
The microphone was part of Perseverance's recording device known as the 'SuperCam'. So, from the recording on SuperCam, scientists managed to capture the sound of a wind like a tornado, namely the dust devil in September 2021.
"We can learn a lot more with sound than with some other tools. They read periodically," said planetary scientist Roger Wiens of Purdue University in Indiana.
"The microphone allows us to take samples, not quite at the speed of sound, but almost 100,000 times per second. This helps us better understand what Mars was like," he continued.
The Perseverance microphone actually only records for three minutes a day. However, this is the first time that dust devils have roamed and been caught on footage after Perseverance's 215 days on Mars. However, in fact, other instruments have recorded evidence that there were nearly 100 whirlwinds in other areas. Perseverance is headquartered only in Jezero Crater.
Scientists estimate that the dust devil's size is around 25 meters while it is at least 118 meters tall. By combining the photos with wind, pressure, temperature and dust readings, Perseverance tracked the speed of the mini tornado. The wind was coming at a speed of 19 kilometers per hour.
"The difference (with Earth -- ed) is that the air pressure on Mars is much lower so the winds, while just as fast, push about 1% of the pressure at the same wind speed on Earth. "It's not a strong wind, but enough to blow sand particles into the air which creates a dust devil," he said.