Martian weather is terribly dusty.

A camera aboard NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover – a car-sized robot that has explored the planet for nearly a decade – recently spotted a dusty gust of wind blowing across the red desert.

You can see the weather in the footage below, which was captured by one of the machine’s hazard avoidance cameras, or Hazcams. The top image shows Hazcam footage, while the bottom image shows processed footage (with “change detection software”) to help visualize how the burst moved.

Mars rovers have already broken dust devils crossing the desert. But NASA researchers think this latest dust explosion is a gust of wind. “Scientists believe it to be a gust of wind rather than a dust devil, as it does not appear to have the characteristic vorticity or twisting of a dust devil,” NASA explained.

The tweet may have been deleted
(opens in a new tab)

Occasionally, Mars experiences extreme, long-lasting dusty weather events, such as dust storms. These storms can be huge, but they are also normal. “Every year there are moderately large dust storms that pop up on Mars and they cover continent-sized areas and last for weeks at a time,” said Michael Smith, planetary scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center. from NASA.

And about every five years or so, a truly monstrous dust storm can encompass much of the planet.

In this dusty world, the Curiosity rover continues to gradually climb an area called Mount Sharp, which is a peak inside Mars’ Gale crater. The NASA robot is investigating whether the planet might have been habitable enough for tiny microbes to thrive, perhaps in the moist soils of lake or stream beds.

So far, there is no evidence of life existing anywhere other than on our extremely biodiverse planet, Earth.