The Perseverance rover captured a two-kilometer-high tornado on Mars
Miscellaneous / / October 01, 2023
While searching for traces of former life on Mars, NASA's Perseverance rover spotted a tall dust devil. He filmed from a distance of about 4 kilometers, so only the lower part was recorded.
Similar tornadoes occur here quite often. But this one was especially large: it reached two kilometers in height and 61 meters in diameter (the dimensions were determined by the shadow cast). And he moved at a speed of 19 kilometers per hour.
On published NASA video shows the movement of the โdust devil,โ as the agency calls it, accelerated 20 times.
The Perseverance rover is currently exploring the Jezero Crater. About 3 billion years ago in its place was seething the mouth of a river flowing into a lake. Now it is a completely desert world - the drought here is 1,000 times worse than in the Sahara on Earth. But even in such conditions, evidence of former life could have been preserved, scientists are sure.
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