Listen to a Martian dust devil hit NASA’s Perseverance rover | Science News

On September 27, 2021, Perseverance’s navigation camera spotted a dust devil (purplish cloud in the images at top, which were processed to reveal the dust) whirling toward it from 50 to 60 meters away. As the whirlwind swept across the rover, Perseverance’s microphone recorded the sound it made, capturing the first-ever audio of a Martian dust devil (middle), and the rover’s instruments detected a slight drop in atmospheric pressure (bottom). These data may someday help researchers better understand dust dynamics on Mars. Read more: Video: JPL-Caltech/NASA, LANL, CNES, INTA-CSIC, Space Science Institute, ISAE-SUPAERO