Tag Archives: Devil

Rachel McAdams Opened Up About Why She Turned Down A Role In “The Devil Wears Prada” After The Success Of “Mean Girls” And “The Notebook” – BuzzFeed News

  1. Rachel McAdams Opened Up About Why She Turned Down A Role In “The Devil Wears Prada” After The Success Of “Mean Girls” And “The Notebook” BuzzFeed News
  2. Rachel McAdams Poses for Minimally Retouched Photos with Her Armpit Hair Showing: ‘This Is My Body’ PEOPLE
  3. Rachel McAdams Turned Down ‘Iron Man,’ ‘Casino Royale,’ ‘Mission: Impossible III’ and ‘Devil Wears Prada’ in Two-Year Period: ‘I Felt Guilty’ Variety
  4. Rachel McAdams’ Red Dress With Cutouts Is Giving Dancing Lady Emoji Vibes Parade Magazine
  5. Rachel McAdams Recalls Feeling Guilty Over 2-Year Break from Acting PEOPLE
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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‘Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur’ Bosses Discuss Bringing The First Black Female Superhero Animated Series To Life: “It’s Black Girl Magic” – Deadline

  1. ‘Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur’ Bosses Discuss Bringing The First Black Female Superhero Animated Series To Life: “It’s Black Girl Magic” Deadline
  2. Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur Releases Its First Episode Online for Free CBR – Comic Book Resources
  3. Libe Barer & Gary Anthony Williams Interview: Moon Girl And Devil Dinosaur Screen Rant
  4. Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur Review: A Superhero Adventure Brimming with Heart, Humor, and Charm ComicBook.com
  5. ‘Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur’ Cast and Character Guide Collider
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Prince Harry says UK royals got into bed with tabloid press ‘devil’

LONDON, Jan 8 (Reuters) – Prince Harry has said he had made public his rifts with the British royal family and taken on the press to try to help the monarchy and change the media, the latter described by his father King Charles as a “suicide mission”.

In the first of a series of TV interviews broadcast on Sunday ahead of the launch of his memoir, Harry accused members of his family of getting into bed with the devil – the tabloid press – to sully him and his wife Meghan to improve their own reputations.

He told Britain’s ITV he had fled Britain with his family for California in 2020 “fearing for our lives” and said he no longer recognised his father or his elder brother Prince William, the heir to the throne.

“After many, many years of lies being told about me and my family, there comes a point where, going back to the relationship between certain members of the family and the tabloid press, those certain members have decided to get in the bed with the devil … to rehabilitate their image,” he said.

“The moment that that rehabilitation comes at the detriment of others, me, other members of my family, then that’s where I draw the line.”

On Thursday, Harry’s book “Spare” mistakenly went on sale in Spain five days before its official release, chronicling not only hugely personal details, such as how he lost his virginity and took illegal drugs, but more intimate private instances of family disharmony.

His elder brother had knocked him over in a brawl, and both siblings begged their father not to marry his second wife, Camilla, now the Queen Consort, the book says.

Commentators say the book has plunged the monarchy into its biggest crisis since the days of the royal soap opera in the 1990s around the break-up of Charles’ marriage to his late first wife Princess Diana, the mother of William and Harry.

It all comes just four months after Queen Elizabeth died and Charles acceded to the throne.

In the ITV interview, Harry repeated and elaborated on accusations that he and Meghan have made since they left royal duties; that the royals and their aides not only failed to protect them from a hostile and sometimes racist press, but actively leaked stories about them via anonymous sources.

CONFLICT

“The saddest part of that is certain members of my family and the people that work for them are complicit in that conflict,” he said, indicating that included both Charles and Camilla.

So far, there has been no comment from Buckingham Palace. Harry said he didn’t think his father or brother would read his book.

An unnamed friend of William told the Sunday Times that the Prince of Wales was “burning” with anger, but would not respond “for the good of his family and the country”.

Harry told ITV he wanted reconciliation with his family members but said they had shown no interest, giving the impression it was better to keep him and Meghan as villains.

“I genuinely believe, and I hope, that reconciliation between my family and us will have a ripple effect across the entire world. Maybe that’s lofty, maybe that’s naive,” he said.

Harry also said he hoped his multiple legal actions against newspapers would help change the media, saying it was “at the epicentre of so many of the problems across the UK”.

“My father said to me that it was probably a suicide mission to try and change the press,” he said.

Polls suggest many Britons are becoming bored of the whole royal melodrama, and further revelations are unlikely to shake their views, whether sympathetic to Harry and Meghan, or to those they criticise.

“I love my father. I love my brother. I love my family. I will always do. Nothing of what I’ve done in this book or otherwise has ever been to … to harm them or hurt them,” he said.

Reporting by Michael Holden and Sarah Mills; Editing by Frances Kerry and Paul Simao

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Missile strikes on Ukraine kill one, Zelenskiy says Russians in league with the devil

  • Russia fires more than 20 cruise missiles, killing one person
  • President Zelenskiy says Russians are in league with the devil
  • Attack dubbed ‘terror on New Year’s Eve’ in Kyiv
  • Energy minister says attacks did not cause serious damage

KYIV, Dec 31 (Reuters) – Russia fired more than 20 cruise missiles at targets in Ukraine on Saturday, killing at least one person in Kyiv, in attacks President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said showed Moscow was in league with the devil.

The second barrage of major Russian missile attacks in three days badly damaged a Kyiv hotel and a residential building. Energy Minister German Galushchenko on Facebook said the strikes had not caused serious damage to the national power system.

Russia has been attacking vital Ukraine infrastructure since October with barrages of missile and drones, causing sweeping power blackouts as the cold weather bites.

Zelenskiy speaking in a video address noted that Russia had also launched attacks at Easter and Christmas.

“They call themselves Christians … but they are for the devil. They are for him and with him,” he said.

At least a dozen people were injured in the attacks. A Japanese journalist was among the wounded and taken to a hospital, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

DTEK, the country’s largest private energy company, later said it had cancelled emergency power outages in Kyiv and the surrounding region.

Zelenskiy in comments addressed to Russian speakers said President Vladimir Putin was destroying Russia’s future.

“No one will forgive you for terror. No one in the world will forgive you for this. Ukraine will not forgive,” he said, reiterating calls for allies to supply more anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems.

Army chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said air defences shot down 12 incoming cruise missiles, including six around the Kyiv region, five in the Zhytomyrskiy region and one in the Khmeltnytskiy region.

The cruise missiles had been launched from strategic bombers over the Caspian Sea hundreds of miles away and from land-based launchers, he said on Telegram.

“Russia’s mass missile attack is deliberately targeting residential areas, not even our energy infrastructure,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter after the attack.

“War criminal Putin ‘celebrates’ New Year by killing people,” Kuleba said, calling for Russia to be deprived of its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets described the attack as “Terror on New Year’s Eve.”

NATIONWIDE BLASTS

Other cities across Ukraine also came under fire. In the southern region of Mykolaiv, local governor Vitaliy Kim on television said that six people had been wounded.

Kim in a separate post on Telegram said Russia had targeted civilians with the strikes, something Moscow has previously denied.

“According to today’s tendencies, the occupiers are striking not just critical (infrastructure) … in many cities (they are targeting) simply residential areas, hotels, garages, roads.”

In the western city of Khmelnytskyi, two people were wounded in a drone attack, Ukrainian presidential aide Kyrylo Tymoshenko said. He also reported a strike in the southern industrial city of Zaporizhzhia, which Tymoshenko said had damaged residential buildings.

Ukraine’s defence ministry responded on Telegram by saying: “With each new missile attack on civilian infrastructure, more and more Ukrainians are convinced of the need to fight until the complete collapse of Putin’s regime.”

Curfews ranging from 7 p.m. to midnight remained in place across Ukraine, making celebrations for the start of 2023 impossible in public spaces.

Several regional governors posted messages on social media warning residents not to break restrictions on New Year’s Eve.

(This story has been refiled to fix a typo in the headline)

Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk and David Ljunggren; Writing by Max Hunder and Tom Balmforth; Editing by Hugh Lawson, David Holmes and Mark Porter

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Listen to The Sound of a Dust Devil Churning Across Mars : ScienceAlert

The Martian soundscape can be as hauntingly alien as one might hope to hear on another world. The boom of occasional meteorite impacts, the groan of the quaking ground, the whisper of an endless wind.

Now we get a front-row seat at the approach and retreat of a roaring devil as it scours the surface, helping drive the cycle of dust through the atmosphere and around the small, rust-stained world.

Perseverance was the first rover to reach the surface of Mars with a working microphone attached, and the instrument has been put to good use since the rover landed in February 2021. The mic is part of a suite of recording tools on the rover known as the SuperCam.

It’s thanks to this innovative piece of technology that we can hear for the first time what a miniature whirlwind of dust sounds like on another planet. It’s eerie and brief and quite fantastic at the same time.

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“We can learn a lot more using sound than we can with some of the other tools,” says planetary scientist Roger Wiens from Purdue University in Indiana.

“They take readings at regular intervals.”

“The microphone lets us sample, not quite at the speed of sound, but nearly 100,000 times a second. It helps us get a stronger sense of what Mars is like.”

Perseverance’s microphone actually only records for three minutes a day: this is the first time it’s been on when a dust devil has wandered past, even though other instruments have recorded evidence of almost 100 other whirlwinds where the rover is based in the Jezero Crater.

The dust devil passed over the rover on 27 September 2021 – the 215th Martian day (or sol) of its mission. Scientists estimate that the size of the dust devil was around 25 meters (just over 80 feet) wide, while it would have been at least 118 meters (387 feet) tall.

By combining photographs with readings of wind, pressure, temperature, and dust, Perseverance was also able to track the speed of the mini-Martian tornado as it passed, which came in at 19 kilometers (12 miles) per hour.

The rover’s Navcam observations of the dust devil encounter. (Murdoch et al., Nature Communications, 2022)

“This chance dust devil encounter demonstrates the potential of acoustic data for resolving the rapid wind structure of the Martian atmosphere,” Wiens and colleagues write in their paper.

The surrounding winds would’ve been faster, and in the recording, you can hear the silence that reflects the calm eye of this particular tiny storm. Part of what makes the new information valuable is how it compares to events like this on Earth.

“The wind is fast – about 25 miles per hour, but about what you would see in a dust devil on Earth,” says Wiens. “The difference is that the air pressure on Mars is so much lower that the winds, while just as fast, push with about 1 percent of the pressure the same speed of wind would have back on Earth.”

“It’s not a powerful wind, but clearly enough to loft particles of grit into the air to make a dust devil.”

All of the data that we’re currently collecting on Mars is useful for a variety of reasons. For one, it gives us a better idea of how the planet evolved, which in turn gives scientists clues to how other planets in the Universe might be evolving too.

Those other planets include Earth, and as Mars is our closest planetary neighbor, our histories are closely intertwined. Comparing Earth and Mars gives us a better idea of the past and the future of both planets.

There’s also humankind’s ambition to one day set foot on Mars. Recordings like this hint at the sort of conditions we can expect, and how those conditions might be protected against or utilized – the way that wind might naturally clear solar panels, for example.

“Just like Earth, there is different weather in different areas on Mars,” says Wiens. “Using all of our instruments and tools, especially the microphone, helps us get a concrete sense of what it would be like to be on Mars.”

The research has been published in Nature Communications.

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Go to Mars without being there! Listen to dust devil sound captured by Perseverance Rover

NASA’s Mars Rover Perseverance has captured the sound made by a dust devil. Yes, we kid you not and you can listen to it here.

The way the trend is growing, probably, you would want to visit Mars. Well, that is unlikely to happen, unfortunately. However, that should not spoil your mood too much as you can experience what it feels like to be on Mars, at least what some things sound like. NASA’s Mars Rover Perseverance has captured the sound made by a dust devil. Yes, we kid you not and you can listen to it here.

How did it happen? By chance the rover had its microphone on when a whirling tower of red dust passed directly overhead and it recorded the sound.

So, what is a dust devil? A dust devil is a whirlwind consisting of red dust particles, shortlived, but they rumble in with gusts of up to 25 mph.

So, what does a dust devil sound like on Mars? Mars’s thin atmosphere makes these dust devils quieter, unlike dust devils on Earth. When the dust devil hits the rover, then its navigator camera captured its images, and its weather monitoring devices collected data.

This dust devil was 400 feet tall 80 feet across and traveling at 16 feet per second. According to scientists, it was just luck that the devil appeared in those 3 minutes of the day when the rover’s microphone is turned on. Otherwise there was absolutely no chance of it getting captured.

These recordings help scientists to study the Martian wind, atmospheric turbulence, and dust movements. The rocks present there might contain microbial life which in turn helps scientists to understand the atmosphere of Mars.

So, what does a dust devil sound like on Mars? Listen to the recording below:



Perseverance has collected 18 samples which will be brought to Earth for further research. Helicopter Ingenuity is also busy working there and logged many flights with the longest lasting for 3 minutes.


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How researchers recorded the sounds of a Martian dust devil for the first time

On September 27th, 2021, a dust devil whirled past the Perseverance rover on Mars. The rover not only caught the dust devil on its cameras and with its weather sensors but also picked up the faint, eerie sounds of the dust devil on its microphone, the first instrument of its kind to record sounds on Mars.  

“We were convinced that the microphone was going to give us a whole load of new observations of atmospheric features on Mars that we hadn’t been able to see before,” Naomi Murdoch of the University of Toulouse, lead author of a Nature Communications paper about the research, said to The Verge. “And we haven’t been disappointed!”

Rovers have been exploring Mars for decades with cameras, spectrographs, and weather sensors, giving us a better picture than ever before of what the environment on the Red Planet is like. Now, sounds are being added to the list. This combination of data is allowing researchers to understand more about these dusty phenomena and the impacts they could have on future robotic and crewed missions.

Dust devils arise due to atmospheric conditions that are common on Mars. “You have to have a really large temperature gradient between the ground and the air,” Murdoch explained. “So the ground gets really warm, and this heats up the air, which then makes the air start to rise. And as the air starts to rise, things start to rotate, and that’s when you get this whirlwind-like motion.”

This process happens here on Earth, too, but what is notable about Martian dust devils is just how large they can get. The dust devil recently detected by Perseverance was 25 meters wide and 118 meters tall (82 feet by 387 feet), putting it squarely in the average zone in terms of size for Martian dust storms. But they can grow much bigger, too, as dust on Mars can be whipped up in huge global dust storms.

“One of the big problems we have right now is that we can’t predict dust storms very well,” Murdoch said. And that has implications for everything — from trying to land spacecraft safely on Mars to trying to keep dust off vital solar panels to keep robotic missions going. Current models especially struggle to predict the large global dust storms, and that seems to be because it’s hard to model the forces that are lifting dust up off the planet’s surface. 

Researchers know that forces like wind shear and dust devils can lift dust off the surface, but there are plenty of open questions about exactly how this happens. One particularly odd finding is that while dust devils are common in the Jezero Crater where Perseverance is located, they are notably rare in Elysium Planitia, the area in which the InSight lander is located, and it’s not clear why.

That’s where the microphone comes in. “What our microphone is sensitive to is specifically the wind speed. So when we see wind gusts, we see a large increase in the sound amplitude on the microphone, just like when you’re talking on the phone and it’s windy,” Murdoch explained. “We’re using that background noise to study the wind.”

With so many scientific instruments on Perseverance needing operating time, the windows available for microphone recordings are each just a few minutes long. To maximize their chances of detecting a dust devil during these short periods, the microphone team timed those windows for periods in the afternoon, when dust devils are most active. Each window is only a few minutes long, and they had just eight windows per month — so it was a combination of careful planning and a healthy dose of luck that this recent dust devil was captured.

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As well as picking up data about the wind conditions, the microphone also detected the sound of small impacts: single grains of dust that were striking the area around the microphone and making a detectable ping. By counting each of these impacts, the researchers could see how dense these particles were within the dust devil — a measurement that no other instrument has been able to take and that could help to model how dust devils lift particles from the surface.

This research is just an early example in the burgeoning field of using acoustic data in planetary exploration. For a planet or moon with an atmosphere, acoustic instruments can collect data at a high sampling rate, allowing observations of fast-changing events like wind gusts compared to tools like wind sensors, which operate on timescales of a few seconds. 

“Our sampling rate is much higher than all of the regular weather sensors that you’ll find on planetary rovers and planetary landers,” Murdoch said. “With a microphone, it’s a bit like using a microscope. We’re looking at what’s happening at these really short time scales.” 

There’s also the human fascination that comes along with hearing the sounds of another planet. NASA’s playlist of Perseverance sounds allows anyone to experience the noises of the Red Planet, from the whistling of the wind to the whirring of the rover itself, all enabled by SuperCam’s microphone.

“Our microphone bandwidth is exactly the same bandwidth as the human ear, so the sounds we’re hearing aren’t adjusted in any way. They’re the sounds that you would hear if you were standing on another planet,” Murdoch said. “And that’s really cool.”

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NASA’s Perseverance rover captures first-ever sound of dust devil on Mars: “Definitely luck”

What’s a dust devil sound like on Mars? A NASA rover by chance had its microphone on when a whirling tower of red dust passed directly overhead, recording the racket.

It’s about 10 seconds of not only rumbling gusts of up to 25 mph, but the pinging of hundreds of dust particles against the rover Perseverance. Scientists released the first-of-its-kind audio Tuesday.

It sounds strikingly similar to dust devils on Earth, although quieter since Mars’ thin atmosphere makes for more muted sounds and less forceful wind, according to the researchers.

The dust devil came and went over Perseverance quickly last year, thus the short length of the audio, said the University of Toulouse’s Naomi Murdoch, lead author of the study appearing in Nature Communications. At the same time, the navigation camera on the parked rover captured images, while its weather-monitoring instrument collected data.

“It was fully caught red-handed by Persy,” said co-author German Martinez of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

Photographed for decades at Mars but never heard until now, dust devils are common at the red planet. This one was in the average range: at least 400 feet tall and 80 feet across, traveling at 16 feet per second.

The microphone picked up 308 dust pings as the dust devil whipped by, said Murdoch, who helped build it.

“Capturing a passing dust devil takes some luck,” NASA wrote on Tuesday. “Scientists can’t predict when they’ll pass by, so rovers like Perseverance and Curiosity routinely monitor in all directions for them. When scientists see them occur more frequently at a certain time of day, or approach from a certain direction, they use that information to focus their monitoring to try to catch a dust devil.”

Given that the rover’s SuperCam microphone is turned on for less than three minutes every few days, Murdoch said it was “definitely luck” that the dust devil appeared when it did on Sept. 27, 2021. She estimates there was just a 1-in-200 chance of capturing dust-devil audio.

Of the 84 minutes collected in its first year, there’s “only one dust devil recording,” she wrote in an email from France.

This same microphone on Perseverance’s mast provided the first sounds from Mars – namely the Martian wind – soon after the rover landed in February 2021. It followed up with audio of the rover driving around and its companion helicopter, little Ingenuity, flying nearby, as well as the crackle of the rover’s rock-zapping lasers, the main reason for the microphone.

These recordings allow scientists to study the Martian wind, atmospheric turbulence and now dust movement as never before, Murdoch said. The results “demonstrate just how valuable acoustic data can be in space exploration.”

On the prowl for rocks that might contain signs of ancient microbial life, Perseverance has collected 18 samples so far at Jezero Crater, once the scene of a river delta. NASA plans to return these samples to Earth a decade from now. The helicopter Ingenuity has logged 36 flights, the longest lasting almost three minutes.

NASA captured a photo of a 12-mile-high dust devil back in 2012. 

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Audio from a Martian dust devil captured for the first time

NASA announced today that the Perseverance rover has captured audio from a Martian dust devil for the first time. But the clip not only treats us to the novelty of hearing an extraterrestrial vortex; it could also help scientists better understand how dust might affect future Mars missions.

The rover’s microphones picked up the dust devil on September 27th, 2021. To the casual ear, it sounds similar to a microphone picking up a wind gust on Earth, but scientists can learn much more. “As the dust devil passed over Perseverance we could actually hear individual impacts of grains on the rover,” Naomi Murdoch, planetary scientist and the author of new report, told The Washington Post. “We could actually count them.”

Dust is a significant factor in planning for Mars missions. It can erode a spacecraft’s heat shields, damage scientific instruments, incapacitate parachutes and smother solar panels.

Scientists estimate the recorded whirlwind measured about 82 feet wide by 387 feet high. (Although that may sound intimidating, this relatively minor storm didn’t damage the rover.) As you can hear below (via Science News), the clip includes a brief pause in the turbulence as the dust devil’s eye passes over the rover.

Perseverance also captured images (also included in the recording) of the approaching storm. Scientists had to coordinate their instruments to boost the odds of recording a storm. The rover only records sound snippets lasting under three minutes and only does so eight times per month. That meant timing them for when dust devils are most likely to hit while pointing its cameras where they’re most likely to approach. In this case, that preparation — and no small degree of luck — paid off.

“I can’t think of a previous case where so much data from so many instruments contributed to characterizing a single dust devil,” said John Edward Moores, a planetary scientist at York University. “Had the [camera] been pointing in a different direction or the microphone observation been scheduled just a few seconds later, key pieces of the story would be missing. Sometimes it helps to be lucky in science!”

The roughly 10-ft.-long Perseverance rover launched on July 30th, 2020 and touched Martian soil on February 18th, 2021. NASA uses the vehicle to explore the Jezero crater and search for signs of ancient microbial life as part of the Mars 2020 mission.

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In a first, hear a Mars rover get hit by a 387-foot dust devil

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Scientists have seen plenty of dust devils on Mars, and now, for the first time, they’ve heard one. The vortex made a direct hit on NASA’s Perseverance rover, peppering the spacecraft with dust and whispering into a microphone that the team had smartly included in their package of instruments.

The trove of data coming from the encounter has thrilled scientists, who are keenly aware of the outsize influence Martian dust has on the planet’s climate. The fine-grained particles also can damage scientific instruments on Martian landers and rovers and potentially blanket solar panels to the point of uselessness. Studying the rover’s gritty recordings can provide insights into the way dust might affect ongoing Mars missions, and maybe even future human exploration.

The sound of the dust devil, published Tuesday to accompany a paper in the journal Nature Communications, is subtle. It’s crackly and percussive, like radio static, though one might more generously imagine a breeze ruffling some distant palm fronds.

Then come a few seconds of silence as the eye of the dust devil passes over the rover. Sound returns for another couple of seconds as the trailing wall of the dust devil spins over the rover again. Then it’s all over, and Mars is quiet once more.

NASA’s Perseverance rover recorded the sound of a dust devil on Mars. Video: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS/INTA-CSIC/Space Science Institute/ISAE-SUPAERO (Video: NASA)

This was not exactly an “extreme weather” event. Mars has a trifling atmosphere, about 1 percent as dense as Earth’s, so the storms there don’t howl. The rover suffered no damage.

Still, there is plenty of signal in this short dose of noise, and in the visual images taken by the SuperCam instrument on top of the rover. Researchers estimate the dust devil was about 25 meters (82 feet) wide and 118 meters (387 feet) high. That’s taller than the Statue of Liberty, pedestal included.

“As the dust devil passed over Perseverance we could actually hear individual impacts of grains on the rover,” said Naomi Murdoch, a planetary scientist at ISAE-SUPAERO, an aerospace engineering institute in Toulouse, France, and the author of the new report. “We could actually count them.”

A dust devil is a bit like a miniature storm cell. It typically pops up during the middle of the day as hot air spirals up from the surface. A scientist wishing to speak more technically could call this a convective vortex loaded with dust. The dust is not the cause of the vortex, but is just along for the ride.

Murdoch said the team’s success in capturing a dust devil’s sound reflects both luck and preparation. The rover’s microphone takes recordings lasting a little under three minutes, and it does that only eight times a month. But the recordings are timed for when dust devils are most likely to occur, and the rover cameras are pointed in the direction where they are most likely to be seen.

“Then we have to just cross our fingers,” she said.

That clearly did the trick, because Perseverance managed to capture the dust devil through multiple instruments, registering the drop in air pressure, changes in temperature, the sound of grains making impact, all topped off with images that show the size and shape of the vortex.

“I can’t think of a previous case where so much data from so many instruments contributed to characterizing a single dust devil,” John Edward Moores, a planetary scientist at York University, said in an email after reviewing the new paper. He said the team was fortunate to have all the observations overlap.

“Had the [camera] been pointing in a different direction or the microphone observation been scheduled just a few seconds later, key pieces of the story would be missing. Sometimes it helps to be lucky in science!”

Mars rover digs up intriguing clues in the hunt for life beyond Earth

While the Perseverance team is cheering their windy encounter, calm weather has become a problem for a different NASA robotic craft on Mars. The InSight lander, which touched down more than 2,000 miles away in November 2018, has instruments to explore seismicity and the interior of the planet.

InSight has lasted a couple of years beyond its primary mission timeline but now is in the final weeks of its scientific life because its solar panels are 90 percent covered with dust. What it needs is a direct hit by a dust devil, because such vortices are capable of cleaning solar panels.

“A dust devil is like a little vacuum cleaner running over the surface,” said Bruce Banerdt, a planetary geophysicist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the principal investigator for InSight.

But InSight hasn’t gotten a visit from a devil capable of cleaning its arrays. Banerdt said currently there is enough power to run a seismometer for eight hours, but then it has to rest for three days while the batteries recharge.

“We’re still limping along at this point,” he said.

Murdoch said this scattershot pattern of dust devils appearing on Mars remains mysterious. Planetary scientists also can’t predict when the Red Planet will have a global dust storm, she said, citing “our poor understanding of precisely how and when dust is lifted from the surface of Mars.”

But that’s changing, she hopes, as the microphone her team developed continues to listen to the sounds of that distant desert planet.

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