Perseverance rover will one day save astronauts from storms on Mars; NASA explains how

Having spent 456 sols or Mars days (469 Earth days) on the Red Planet, the Perseverance rover has already contributed to numerous studies that have expanded the human understanding of the barren world. NASA said that the rover’s contribution will now see new heights as it will help future robotic and human explorers survive the wrath of winds on Mars.

According to the latest report released by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Perseverance’s landing site, the Jezero crater, is one of the most active sources of dust on the planet. Besides, the rover has seen some of the most intense dust storms ever during the first 200 days of its landing at the Jezero crater. In over one year of its operation, Perseverance has observed hundreds of dust-bearing whirlwinds and interestingly, it even managed to capture one with its camera. 

How would Perseverance protect future robots and astronauts?

According to the latest estimates, the Perseverance rover endures as many as four dust devils on a typical Martian day. A new study, recently published in Science Advances, says that an extensive study on the dust processes on the red planet could help scientists predict the storms, which are a big threat on Mars. Until now, the Martian dust has played a villainous role as it has been the reason for the demise of NASA's Opportunity rover. Besides, the InSight lander, which has helped in understanding the interiors of Earth's neighbour is also losing power due to heavy dust on its solar panels. 

The study authors highlighted that the rover's cameras and the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) sensors have documented more than once per hour during a peak hourlong period just after noon. According to JPL, the biggest one observed by Perseverance was a massive storm covering four square kilometres. Claire Newman, lead author of the paper, in a statement, said, "We think these gust-liftings are infrequent but could be responsible for a large fraction of the background dust that hovers all the time in the Martian atmosphere".

Meanwhile, Perseverance has also taken some damage courtesy of the Martian storms. NASA revealed that two of MEDA's wind sensors have been damaged and the suspected reason for this are the sand grains. However, Manuel de la Torre Juarez, MEDA’s deputy principal investigator at JPL, said, "The wind sensors are seriously impacted, ironically, because we got what we wanted to measure".