Scientists reveal mystery behind cosmic dust, say Mars might be the reason

In a new revelation, it was discovered that Mars’ dust storms fill the solar system. Scientists talk about the zodiacal light, or sunlight reflected toward Earth by a cloud of tiny dust particles orbiting the sun. The dust particles have always remained a mystery for the scientists. However, now, a team of Juno scientists argues that Mars might be responsible for these dust particles. 

Mystery solved 

According to the reports by NASA, it was discovered when an instrument aboard the Juno spacecraft detected dust particles slamming into the spacecraft. This was observed during its journey from Earth to Jupiter. Then, the impacts led to important clues about the origin and orbital evolution of the dust. NASA took to its official Twitter handle and shared a video of the same. “In the night sky before dawn, or after dusk, you might see a faint column of light — the reflection of a cloud of tiny dust particles orbiting the Sun. Data from our Juno spacecraft's voyage to Jupiter suggests that Mars is the source of this cosmic dust”, read the caption of the video. Let’s have a look.

John Leif Jørgensen, a professor at the Technical University of Denmark said, “I never thought we’d be looking for interplanetary dust". Also, he designed the four-star trackers that are part of Juno’s magnetometer investigation. These cameras capture images of the sky every quarter of a second. This helps in determining Juno’s orientation in space by recognising star patterns in its images.

Netizens react 

Stunned by the video, netizens took over the comment section. One Twitter user wrote, "Juno travels at more than 200,000 kph. At that speed even a speck of dust must do a fair amount of damage. If we ever have spacecraft that go a quarter or half the speed of light they are going to have to be super strong to withstand impacts". The video has managed to gather over 102K views.