Dust devils spotted at Mars probe’s landing site

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Friday , May 09, 2008 at 2337 hrs NASA scientists have spotted two whirling dust devils towering a kilometre high at the spot where the Phoenix Mars lander is due to land in a few weeks.

However, according to them, the dust vortices pose no threat to the landing, but it could provide dramatic views from the probe when it alights on the flat, relatively barren landscape of Mars.

In fact, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is monitoring the site, has pinpointed the two dust devils at the centre of the landing ellipse, which measures nearly 20 by 100 kilometres across.

“It’s the low gravity and the fact that the surface gets warm and the energy is transferred into turbulence and uplift within the atmosphere,” the New Scientist quoted Phoenix team member Ray Arvidson as saying. Dust devils are created when vortices of air —set in motion when warm air rises from the surface on an otherwise still day — pick up dust from the ground.