Mars Express Captures 30-Plus Active Dust Devils in 1,000-km Mamers Valles
Updated
Updated · European Space Agency · Jun 17
Mars Express Captures 30-Plus Active Dust Devils in 1,000-km Mamers Valles
3 articles · Updated · European Space Agency · Jun 17
Summary
More than 30 active dust devils appear in a new Mars Express image of Mamers Valles, where the whirlwinds show up as yellow-circled dots with pinkish trailing shadows.
Nine sequential camera channels from the orbiter’s High Resolution Stereo Camera make moving features stand out, letting scientists infer each dust devil’s direction and speed.
Mars dust devils can rise up to 8 km, travel for kilometres and reach 45 metres per second, helping redistribute dust across the planet.
Mamers Valles stretches about 1,000 km and reaches 25 km wide and 1.2 km deep, with mesas, cliffs and debris-covered glaciers preserving buried water ice.
The roughly 3.8-billion-year-old region records Mars’s shift from a warmer, wetter world to today’s cold, arid planet, extending a mission that has studied Mars since 2003.
How might the detection of electrical discharges during Martian dust storms reshape our understanding of Mars’s chemistry and potential for past or present life?
Could the discovery of accessible buried glaciers in Mamers Valles revolutionize plans for human settlement and resource utilization on Mars?
With Mars Sample Return delayed, what new technologies could allow us to confirm biosignatures and study Martian water ice directly on Mars?