Explained: NASA’s first-ever recording of sound of dust devil on Mars

Researchers hope that recording the sound of a dust devil on Mars will help them better understand the weather and climate on the planet, including how its arid surface and thin atmosphere may have once supported life Paris: 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 Tuesday. “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. “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. A dust devil mystery The impact of the dust made “tac tac tac” sounds which will let researchers count the number of particles to study the whirlwind’s structure and behaviour, she said.