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PIA15545: Mars' Whirling Dust Devil
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
 Spacecraft:  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
 Instrument:  HiRISE
 Product Size:  2024 x 1426 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  University of Arizona/HiRISE-LPL
 Other  
Information: 
Other products from image ESP_026394_2160
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA15545.tif (8.67 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA15545.jpg (423.6 kB)

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Original Caption Released with Image:

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Animation 1Animation 2
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A Martian dust devil roughly 12 miles (20 kilometers) high was captured winding its way along the Amazonis Planitia region of Northern Mars on March 14, 2012 by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Despite its height, the plume is little more than three-quarters of a football field wide (70 yards, or 70 meters).

HiRISE is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson. The instrument was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project and the Mars Exploration Rover Project are managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the orbiter.

For more about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, see http://www.nasa.gov/mro.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona Animation Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Image Addition Date:
2012-04-04