The sound of a dust devil on Mars was recorded for the first time as the eye of the whirlwind swept over the top of NASA's Perseverance rover, a new study said.
"We hit the jackpot" when the rover's microphone picked up the noise made by the dust devil overhead, the study's lead author Naomi Murdoch told AFP.
They are a common feature in the Jezero crater, where the Perseverance rover has been operational since February 2021 -- but it had never before managed to record audio of one of them. Mars' atmosphere was much thicker billions of years ago, which allowed for the presence of life-sustaining liquid water, scientists say."We hear the wind associated with the dust devil, the moment it arrives, then nothing because we are in the eye of the vortex," said Murdoch, a planetary researcher at France's ISAE-SUPAERO space research institute, where the SuperCam's microphone was designed.
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