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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A Martian dust devil can be seen consuming its smaller friend in this short video made of images taken at the rim of Jezero Crater by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover on Jan. 25, 2025. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI The six-wheeled explorer recently captured several Red Planet mini-twisters spinning on the rim of Jezero Crater.
A Martian dust devil can be seen consuming a smaller one in this short video made of images taken by a navigation camera aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. These swirling, sometimes towering columns of air and dust are common on Mars. The smaller dust devil’s demise was captured during an imaging experiment conducted by Perseverance’s science team to better understand the forces at play in the Martian atmosphere.
When the rover snapped these images from about 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) away, the larger dust devil was approximately 210 feet (65 meters) wide, while the smaller, trailing dust devil was roughly 16 feet (5 meters) wide. Two other dust devils can also be seen in the background at left and center. Perseverance recorded the scene Jan. 25 as it explored the western rim of Mars’ Jezero Crater at a location called “Witch Hazel Hill.”
“Convective vortices — aka dust devils — can be rather fiendish,” said Mark Lemmon, a Perseverance scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “These mini-twisters wander the surface of Mars, picking up dust as they go and lowering the visibility in their immediate area. If two dust devils happen upon each other, they can either obliterate one another or merge, with the stronger one consuming the weaker.”
While exploring the rim of Jezero Crater on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover captured new images of multiple dust devils in January 2025. These captivating phenomena have been documented for decades by the agency’s Red Planet robotic explorers. NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS/INTA-CSIC/Space Science Institute/ISAE-Supaero/University of Arizona Science of Whirlwinds
Dust devils are formed by rising and rotating columns of warm air. Air near the planet’s surface becomes heated by contact with the warmer ground and rises through the denser, cooler air above. As other air moves along the surface to take the place of the rising warmer air, it begins to rotate. When the incoming air rises into the column, it picks up speed like a spinning ice skater bringing their arms closer to their body. The air rushing in also picks up dust, and a dust devil is born.
“Dust devils play a significant role in Martian weather patterns,” said Katie Stack Morgan, project scientist for the Perseverance rover at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Dust devil study is important because these phenomena indicate atmospheric conditions, such as prevailing wind directions and speed, and are responsible for about half the dust in the Martian atmosphere.”
NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter captured this Martian dust devil casting a shadow on Aug. 1, 1978. During the 15-second interval between the two images, the dust devil moved toward the northeast (toward the upper right) at a rate of about 59 feet (18 meters) per second. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Since landing in 2021, Perseverance has imaged whirlwinds on many occasions, including one on Sept. 27, 2021, where a swarm of dust devils danced across the floor of Jezero Crater and the rover used its SuperCam microphone to record the first sounds of a Martian dust devil.
NASA’s Viking orbiters, in the 1970s, were the first spacecraft to photograph Martian dust devils. Two decades later, the agency’s Pathfinder mission was the first to image one from the surface and even detected a dust devil passing over the lander. Twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity managed to capture their fair share of dusty whirlwinds. Curiosity, which is exploring a location called Mount Sharp in Gale Crater on the opposite side of the Red Planet as Perseverance, sees them as well.
Capturing a dust devil image or video with a spacecraft takes some luck. Scientists can’t predict when they’ll appear, so Perseverance routinely monitors in all directions for them. When scientists see them occur more frequently at a specific time of day or approach from a certain direction, they use that information to focus their monitoring to try to catch additional whirlwinds.
“If you feel bad for the little devil in our latest video, it may give you some solace to know the larger perpetrator most likely met its own end a few minutes later,” said Lemmon. “Dust devils on Mars only last about 10 minutes.”
More About Perseverance
A key objective of Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover is characterizing the planet’s geology and past climate, to help pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet and as the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
NASA’s Mars Sample Return Program, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), is designed to send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program (MEP) portfolio and the agency’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more about Perseverance:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance
News Media Contacts
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
2025-047
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Last Updated Apr 03, 2025 Related Terms
Perseverance (Rover) Curiosity (Rover) Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Mars 2020 Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) Mars Pathfinder Viking Explore More
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By NASA
Explore This Section Exoplanets Home Exoplanets Overview Exoplanets Facts Types of Exoplanets Stars What is the Universe Search for Life The Big Questions Are We Alone? Can We Find Life? The Habitable Zone Why We Search Target Star Catalog Discoveries Discoveries Dashboard How We Find and Characterize Missions People Exoplanet Catalog Immersive The Exoplaneteers Exoplanet Travel Bureau 5 Ways to Find a Planet Strange New Worlds Universe of Monsters Galaxy of Horrors News Stories Blog Resources Get Involved Glossary Eyes on Exoplanets Exoplanet Watch More Multimedia ExEP This artist’s concept pictures the planets orbiting Barnard’s Star, as seen from close to the surface of one of them. Image credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Marenfeld The Discovery
Four rocky planets much smaller than Earth orbit Barnard’s Star, the next closest to ours after the three-star Alpha Centauri system. Barnard’s is the nearest single star.
Key Facts
Barnard’s Star, six light-years away, is notorious among astronomers for a history of false planet detections. But with the help of high-precision technology, the latest discovery — a family of four — appears to be solidly confirmed. The tiny size of the planets is also remarkable: Capturing evidence of small worlds at great distance is a tall order, even using state-of-the-art instruments and observational techniques.
Details
Watching for wobbles in the light from a star is one of the leading methods for detecting exoplanets — planets orbiting other stars. This “radial velocity” technique tracks subtle shifts in the spectrum of starlight caused by the gravity of a planet pulling its star back and forth as the planet orbits. But tiny planets pose a major challenge: the smaller the planet, the smaller the pull. These four are each between about a fifth and a third as massive as Earth. Stars also are known to jitter and quake, creating background “noise” that potentially could swamp the comparatively quiet signals from smaller, orbiting worlds.
Astronomers measure the back-and-forth shifting of starlight in meters per second; in this case the radial velocity signals from all four planets amount to faint whispers — from 0.2 to 0.5 meters per second (a person walks at about 1 meter per second). But the noise from stellar activity is nearly 10 times larger at roughly 2 meters per second.
How to separate planet signals from stellar noise? The astronomers made detailed mathematical models of Barnard’s Star’s quakes and jitters, allowing them to recognize and remove those signals from the data collected from the star.
The new paper confirming the four tiny worlds — labeled b, c, d, and e — relies on data from MAROON-X, an “extreme precision” radial velocity instrument attached to the Gemini Telescope on the Maunakea mountaintop in Hawaii. It confirms the detection of the “b” planet, made with previous data from ESPRESSO, a radial velocity instrument attached to the Very Large Telescope in Chile. And the new work reveals three new sibling planets in the same system.
Fun Facts
These planets orbit their red-dwarf star much too closely to be habitable. The closest planet’s “year” lasts a little more than two days; for the farthest planet, it’s is just shy of seven days. That likely makes them too hot to support life. Yet their detection bodes well in the search for life beyond Earth. Scientists say small, rocky planets like ours are probably the best places to look for evidence of life as we know it. But so far they’ve been the most difficult to detect and characterize. High-precision radial velocity measurements, combined with more sharply focused techniques for extracting data, could open new windows into habitable, potentially life-bearing worlds.
Barnard’s star was discovered in 1916 by Edward Emerson Barnard, a pioneering astrophotographer.
The Discoverers
An international team of scientists led by Ritvik Basant of the University of Chicago published their paper on the discovery, “Four Sub-Earth Planets Orbiting Barnard’s Star from MAROON-X and ESPRESSO,” in the science journal, “The Astrophysical Journal Letters,” in March 2025. The planets were entered into the NASA Exoplanet Archive on March 13, 2025.
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Last Updated Apr 01, 2025 Related Terms
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This exoplanet encyclopedia — continuously updated, with more than 5,600 entries — combines interactive 3D models and detailed data on…
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By NASA
LOCATION: Texas State Capitol – Austin, Texas SUBJECT: Space Day activities at the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas PHOTOGRAPHER: Lauren HarnettNASA March 17, 2025
NASA is heading back to the state capitol in March for Space Day Texas, a recognition of achievements throughout Texas and a look ahead to the impact future human space exploration has on the Lone Star state.
The two-day schedule of events and exhibits focusing on exploration, astronauts, and science, technology, engineering, and math education will include astronaut visits, interactive exhibits, and legislative proclamations.
NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will share its accomplishments on the Capitol grounds from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. CDT Tuesday, March 25, joining academic and commercial partners from across the state to share Texas’ blueprint for expanding humanity’s frontier in space.
On Monday, March 24, exhibits will feature the Texas High School Aerospace Scholars program at the University of Texas Elementary Charter school, along with NASA Johnson’s Office of STEM Engagement, Orion program, and Lockheed Martin. Interactive events will feature NASA STEM engagement programs and hands-on exhibits.
At 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 25, proclamations celebrating NASA’s 25th anniversary of continuous human presence on the International Space Station, the High School Aerospace Scholars program, and the continued progression of the Artemis campaign through NASA’s commercialization of cargo, crew, landers, spacesuits, and rovers will be read in the Texas House and Senate chambers, respectively. Following the proclamations, an Artemis II crew astronaut will participate in a live question and answer session on the front steps of the Capitol.
NASA’s impact in Texas is strong. NASA Johnson has served as the iconic site for some of the greatest moments in American history, from landing humans on the Moon to assembling the International Space Station.
For more than 60 years, NASA has led the world in human space exploration. Today, it is testing technologies on the Space Station that will help humanity push forward to the Moon and Mars. NASA’s workforce in Texas includes more than 10,000 aerospace employees and more than $2 billion in contracts and federal salaries in 2024.
Learn more about NASA Johnson and its impact in Texas at:
https://www.nasa.gov/johnson
-end-
Kelly Humphries
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
kelly.o.humphries@nasa.gov
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:03:21 Meet Hera, our very own asteroid detective. Together with two CubeSats – Milani the rock decoder and Juventas the radar visionary – Hera is off on an adventure to explore Didymos, a double asteroid system that is typical of the thousands that pose an impact risk to planet Earth.
In September 2022 NASA’s DART spacecraft tested if it was possible to divert an asteroid by giving it a shove – and found out that it was! Important knowledge, should we wish to avoid going the same way as the dinosaurs. Astronomers can observe from afar how the smaller asteroid’s orbit has shifted since DART’s impact, but there is still a missing piece of the puzzle if we want to fully understand how ‘kinetic impacting’ works in practice. Suitable for kids and adults alike, this episode of ‘The Incredible Adventures of Hera’ explains what ESA’s asteroid detective and its CubeSat assistants are doing on their cosmic roadtrip through space towards the asteroid, and why it involves skimming close to Mars.
Watch the other episodes of The Incredible Adventures of the Hera Mission
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