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A dust devil looks a bit like a tornado, but is weaker and rarely lasts more than about a minute.

It is a twisting column of warmed air scooting across sun-heated ground, made visible by the dust that it lofts upwards. Although usually benign, occasionally dust devils can kill.

Dust devils have been known to appear on Mars since the 1970s. They have been observed both from the ground and from orbit.

The more dust in the Martian atmosphere, the warmer and more agitated it becomes, and this can escalate into a global dust storm.

When the dust settles, it can coat and disable the solar panels that are essential for many of the instruments we’ve landed on the planet.

There’s a lot we don’t know about how these devils function. But new research, published this week in Nature Communications, has recorded what dust devils sound like – giving fresh insights into how they operate.

But it also raises questions about how future astronauts would detect and interpret sounds on the red planet.

There has been a vast amount of erosion on Mars since the last rivers and lakes vanished, including at the landing sites of both Nasa’s current rovers Curiosity and Perseverance.

Although the erosive power of an individual dust devil is tiny, a billion years worth of dust devils could potentially have worn away kilometres of rock.

There are thus many reasons for wanting to better understand how dust devils function.

And we now know what a Martian dust devil sounds like thanks to the new study led by Naomi Murdoch of Toulouse University in France.

Many passing dust devils have been imaged by cameras on Mars landers and rovers, but Murdoch and her team report a dust devil that luckily passed exactly over the Perseverance rover on September 27, 2021, which was on the floor of Jezero crater.

The rover’s masthead camera, named SuperCam, includes a microphone, and this recorded the sound of the wind rising and falling as the dust devil passed over.

In detail, the wind noise rose when the leading wall of the vortex arrived, followed by a lull representing the calm air in the eye of the vortex, before a second episode of wind noise as the trailing wall of the vortex passed over.

This took less than ten seconds, and you can hear the sound recording here(https://jirafeau.isae-supaero.fr/f.php?h=2JWSkdJR&p=1) (turn your volume to max). Other sensors gave information too. They showed that the pressure fell to a minimum between the two bursts of wind noise – which to me is consistent with sucking rather than blowing – and also recorded impacts of individual dust grains onto the rover.

The dust devil was about 25 metres in diameter, at least 118 metres tall, and was tracking across the ground at about five metres per second.

The maximum wind speed in the rotating vortex was probably just under 11 metres per second, equating to a “fresh” to “strong” breeze on Earth.

Did it really sound like that? Listening to a recording purporting to be the sound of Martian wind is all very well, but is this really what we would hear if we were there ourselves? The first thing to note is that this does genuinely originate as “real sound”, unlike other data such as images or radio signals turned into sound (a process known as sonification), such as the so-called sound of two black holes colliding or radio noise from from Venus’s atmosphere.

The dust devil audio file contains actual sound waves picked up by a microphone on Mars.

There the atmosphere is much thinner than on Earth (Martian surface pressure is less than a hundredth of ours), so the high frequency component of sound hardly carries (scientists say it’s “attenuated”).

The result is that the wind sounds much lower in pitch than a similar wind on Earth.

The only other planetary body from which we have genuine sound recordings is Venus, where in 1982 two Soviet “Venera” landers recorded wind and lander operation noises.

However, if you were on Mars you could never hear the wind directly with your own ears.

If you were foolish enough to expose your ears to Mars’s atmosphere, the low external pressure would cause your eardrums to burst, and you would be instantly deaf as well as having no air to breathe.

If you were to go outside in a pressurised spacesuit (a much more sensible idea), what you would hear would depend on how well the sound waves were transmitted through the solid shell of your helmet, and then on how these were turned back into sound waves in the air inside your helmet.

In other words, you would hear a distorted version of what an external microphone would pick up. Imagine walking round on Earth with your head inside a goldfish bowl and you’ll get part of the idea.

If future human explorers on Mars want to hear what’s going on in the external environment, I suspect they will rely on a suit-mounted microphone feeding to wireless ear buds, although I can’t find any evidence that that this has yet been factored into Mars suit design.

This all boils down to a recording from external microphone being the best way to represent sounds on Mars, or indeed any other planet that has an atmosphere.

If you want to hear some more sounds from Mars, NASA has a collection of audio recordings you can listen to.


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Scientists Chase Falling Satellite to Study Atmospheric Pollution from Spacecraft Reentries

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Scientists Chase Falling Satellite to Study Atmospheric Pollution from Spacecraft Reentries

Scientists take advantage of the spectacular airborne chase of a falling satellite to gather rare data on atmospheric pollution from burnt-up spacecraft. In September 2024, a group of European researchers hopped on an aeroplane outfitted with 26 cameras and flew into the night sky to watch the satellite Cluster Salsa make its flaming return to Earth over the Pacific Ocean. The mission, which was launched from Easter Island, sought chemical byproducts that would have been released during that short, meteor-like reentry event. Despite the glare of bright natural light that impeded a clear view, the researchers captured for the first time images of the satellite fracturing and chemicals being released as it fell to Earth.

Satellite Reentries May Impact Ozone and Climate, Scientists Warn

As per the report presented at the European Conference on Space Debris, reentry produced lithium, potassium, and aluminum emissions — elements with the potential to impact the ozone layer and Earth’s climate. Stefan Löhle of the University of Stuttgart mentioned that the satellite’s weak trail indicated that pieces splintered off and burned with less ferocity than predicted. The satellite started to disintegrate at about 80 kilometres above sea level, and the observations stopped at a height of around 40 kilometres due to the visual extinction.

Such events are increasingly important to monitor as satellite reentries grow in frequency. Although spacecraft such as those in SpaceX’s Starlink fleet are made to burn up completely, surviving debris and dust particles could still affect the upper atmosphere, scientists caution. The aluminum oxide from the melting satellites, for example, could be involved in long-term atmospheric effects, such as changes in thermal balance and ozone destruction.

This mission marks only the fifth time a spacecraft reentry has been observed from the air. Researchers hope to align their collected data with computer models to estimate how much mass satellites lose during disintegration and how that mass interacts chemically with the atmosphere. The data also suggest that some titanium components from the 550-kilogram Cluster Salsa may have survived reentry and landed in the Pacific Ocean.

As more satellites return to Earth, researchers plan to repeat the chase with Salsa’s sister satellites—Rumba, Tango, and Samba—expected to re-enter by 2026. Despite daytime limitations affecting some measurement techniques, these missions may help clarify how spacecraft pollution influences Earth’s upper atmosphere and climate.

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NASA Stacks Artemis 2 Second Stage While the Future of SLS Remains Uncertain

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NASA Stacks Artemis 2 Second Stage While the Future of SLS Remains Uncertain

NASA’s Artemis 2 mission has reached a major milestone as the second stage that powers the Artemis 2 rocket, the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS), has been stacked. Kennedy Space Centre in Florida’s technicians mounted the ICPS on top of the SLS rocket inside the Vehicle Assembly Building on May 1. Driven by its upper stage, NASA’s Orion spacecraft and four-person crew—three NASA astronauts and one Canadian—out of Earth orbit will travel a free-return path around the moon, therefore allowing NASA’s return to deep space exploration.

NASA Advances Artemis 2 Moon Mission as Future of SLS and Orion Faces Uncertainty

As per NASA’s announcement, the ICPS arrived at the VAB last month and was hoisted into position inside the rocket stage adapter. The stage is critical for completing the crew’s journey past low Earth orbit during the 10-day Artemis 2 mission. Images shared by NASA show the second stage being lowered into place, while the Orion spacecraft and service module, delivered this week by Lockheed Martin, await integration. Exploration Ground Systems will process the Orion module before joining the rest of the launch vehicle.

Artemis 2 follows Artemis 1, which launched uncrewed in 2022 and revealed issues with Orion’s heat shield that delayed future missions. The Artemis 2 crew will fly a lunar pass rather than enter lunar orbit. The success of the mission will be vital in opening the path for Artemis 3, currently set for 2027, whereupon humans would land on the moon using a SpaceX Starship lander.

Even with continuous development, ambiguity surrounds the long-term fate of the program. A 2026 budget proposal released May 2 suggests ending the SLS and Orion programs after Artemis 3. If enacted, the mission currently under assembly may be among the final uses of the massive launch vehicle, designed to carry humans beyond low Earth orbit.

Artemis 2 is still relentlessly heading towards launch readiness. Though programming objectives are always changing, NASA’s efforts to prepare the SLS and Orion spacecraft highlight a more general aim of maintaining a continuous lunar presence—a step towards eventual Mars exploration.

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What Happens in Your Brain When You Read? New Study Maps the Reading Mind

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What Happens in Your Brain When You Read? New Study Maps the Reading Mind

Scientists concluded in a recent research published in April 2025 in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews provides an in-depth look into how our brain understands the written language. The study has been conducted by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. The findings of this research have been derived from 163 neuroimaging studies to understand the neural mechanisms behind reading in depth. This comprehensive analysis has shown how different areas of the brain work in synchronisation, mainly the left-hemispheric regions and the cerebellum, to process different written content.

How the Brain Handles Letters to Full Texts

Sabrina Turker, Philip Kuhnke, Gesa Hartwigsen and Beatrice Fumagalli, the researchers involved in the study, found that specific brain areas get activated based on the type of reading. Researchers found that the left occipital cortex’s single cluster was activated after reading letters, whereas words, sentences and paragraphs activated the left hemisphere. While reading pseudo words, unique areas were involved, which has shown the inability of the brain to find the difference between the language that is known and the unknown.

Silent vs. Aloud Reading: What’s the Difference?

A major discovery in this research is the difference between overt (aloud reading) and covert (silent reading) brain activity. Aloud reading triggers the regions linked to sound and movement, whereas silent reading involves more complex multiple-demand areas. According to the researchers, silent reading needs more mental resources than aloud reading.

Explicit vs. Implicit Reading Tasks

The study also revealed the exploration of how the brain responds to explicit reading, i.e. Silent word reading and lexical decision tasks. The former one involves stronger activation in the regions, just like the cerebellar cortices and left orbitofrontal, whereas the implicit reading activated both sides of the inferior frontal, together with insular regions.

Why This Matters

The insights from the study can help support individuals suffering from reading challenges. After knowing how silent reading reacts differently to the brain, educators and doctors can better customise the medical practices for treating disorders such as dyslexia.

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