Posted by tourdemars to Planetology at August 22, 2005 11:26 AM

NASA’s Mars rover Spirit has caught a bevy of dust devils racing across the surface of Mars, which researchers compiled into a stunning new movie. While scaling Husband Hill at its Gusev Crater landing site, cameras aboard Spirit recorded several dust devils blowing across the Martian surface. Researchers condensed the windy devils’ 12-minute, 17-second passing into a short black and white movie clip. “Wind processes are the only active processes that we know are happening on Mars,” said rover science team member Patrick Whelley, who has been studying the dust devil images, in a telephone interview. “They’re short term geologically and occur…[but] they have shaped the landscape.”