Dust devils — dancing, twisting vortices that suck dirt high into the air — seem to contribute a surprisingly large puff of dust to the martian atmosphere.
Patrick Whelley and Ronald Greeley of Arizona State University in Tempe counted almost 55,000 tracks left by dust devils over the course of three years by scrutinizing images from the Mars Orbital Camera. The devils mainly clumped in narrow, seasonally dependent bands at around 60° North and South.
Altogether, dust devils contribute roughly half as much dust to the atmospheric total as do bigger dust storms — information that could improve models that help spacecraft to navigate their way to the red planet's surface. The images show an artist's impression (inset) and a dust devil photographed by NASA's Spirit rover.
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Planetary science: Martian devilry. Nature 454, 256 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/454256a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/454256a
