Phoenix Lander Photographs Martian Whirlwinds

Posted by kdawson on Saturday September 13, 2008 @02:25PM from the taz-lives dept.

Toren Altair recommends a story up on the Space Fellowship site that begins "NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has photographed several dust devils dancing across the arctic plain this week and sensed a dip in air pressure as one passed near the lander. The Surface Stereo Imager ... caught a dust devil in action west of the lander in four frames shot about 50 seconds apart from each other. 'It was a surprise to have a dust devil so visible that it stood [out] with just the normal processing we do,' said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station, lead scientist for the stereo camera. 'Once we saw a couple that way, we did some additional processing and found there are dust devils in 12 of the images.'"

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*could* this affect Phoenix? by CyrusOmega · 2008-09-13 15:09 · Score: 2, Interesting

I wonder what would happen if one of these little devils ran over the lander!?
Conspiracy by curmi · 2008-09-13 16:11 · Score: 2, Interesting

That's not a dust devil. It's a fast moving Martian.
Yet another government agency coverup!