In February 2021, the Perseverance rover sent back the first sounds ever recorded on another planet, and now it has sent back the sound of a mini-storm, a so-called “dust devil,” created on the Red Planet. The rover has a powerful microphone and has been on the surface of Mars since February 2021.

A paper on the sound of the dust vortex was published in the journal Nature under the title “The Sound of a Martian Dust Devil.”

Images obtained by the rover’s SuperCam instrument show that the vortex, the so-called “dust devil”, was 25 meters wide and 120 meters high. A “dust devil” is a whirlwind of dust that appears for a short time.

The 26-second clip must be listened to in headphones or speakers at maximum volume. Air density affects how sound travels on the Red Planet, and loud sounds are heard much more slowly on Mars than on Earth.

A “dust devil” is a kind of miniature thunderstorm chamber that usually occurs in the middle of the day when warm air rises from the surface in a spiral.