14 DAY TRIAL // Officials from the American space agency have just revealed a new image of the Martian surface. Unlike other that only showed sand dunes and canyons, this one shows an actual tornado making its way across the rugged landscape.
As seen from above, the weather event looks like a horizontal “S,” snaking its way on Mars. Though it may seem impossible for Mars to have tornadoes, the reality is that such phenomena are believed to repeat themselves regularly.
According to scientific estimates, this particular dust devil is around 800 meters (2,625 feet) tall, and rather powerful. However, this is not the first time that such occurrences have been imaged on Mars.
The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Spirit managed to snap a few images of dust devils back in its days, before it became permanently entrapped in a patch of loose sand called Troy two years ago.
The new image was collected using the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument aboard the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The spacecraft has been orbiting the Red Planet since 2006, and flies alongside Mars Odyssey and ESA's Mars Express spacecraft.
NASA says that HiRISE was able to capture this amazing new image on February 16, 2012. The 30-meter-wide tornado occurred above a region of Mars called Amazonis Planitia, located in the northern hemisphere of the planet.
Throughout the immediate vicinity of where the new tornado was imaged, experts observed tracks they say were caused by a large number of other, similar weather events. It could be that atmospheric conditions in Amazonis Planitia are well suited to promote the formation of tornadoes.
“The image was taken during the time of Martian year when that planet is farthest from the sun. Just as on Earth, winds on Mars are powered by solar heating,” a NASA press release accompanying the released image explains.
“Exposure to the Sun's rays declines during this season, yet even now, dust devils act relentlessly to clean the surface of freshly deposited dust, a little at a time. Dust devils occur on Earth as well as on Mars. They are spinning columns of air, made visible by the dust they pull off the ground,” it adds.
By analyzing how these features form on Mars as opposed to Earth, experts hope to be able to gain a deeper understanding of the atmosphere surrounding the Red Planet, as well as what happened to it in the distant past.