Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all.

On the web at theshmit.org.

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

The planet Mars has stirred the imagination of scientists and space enthusiast for hundreds of years.

So Mars has blue sunsets because of the difference in atmospheres and the amount of dust and things like that.

Although Mars doesn't have those sandstorms from the Martian, it has really cool dust devils.

That's Hamani Kalucha. She's a planetary scientist who recently completed her PhD at Caltech.

And she spent a lot of time thinking about Mars.

You could think of like the American Southwest as a good analog. Like if you were to walk through Utah, that really

reminds me of what we see from the rover and what it would feel like to walk around Mars.

Occasionally in the distance, you would see these giant volcanoes, like bigger than the size

of Mount Everest. Many people, including Hamani, have wondered, was there life on Mars? And the more

Mars has studied, the closer scientists get to answering that question. The more we learn about

Mars through all of the rovers, the more it seems like ancient Earth. It had these fantastic,

big rivers flowing and big deltas flowing and lakes just like Earth that

were really big. And it was this wonderfully wet and alive world. Using the Perseverance rover,

Hamani studies the Martian surface, looking for evidence of ancient life, anything that might

have lived in those rivers and

deltas billions of years ago.

Mars looks very different now.

Whenever we get pictures back from the rover, it's always this red-hued layer of dust that's

on all these rocks.

...