You were caught in one just yesterday--and a devilishly terrifying experience it was. This was no little Arizona desert whirlwind, only a few tens of meters high and a few meters across and past you in seconds.

No, what hit you yesterday was a monster column towering kilometers high and hundreds of meters wide, 10 times larger than any tornado on Earth. Red-brown sand and dust whipping around faster than 30 meters per second (70 miles per hour) dropped visibility to zero, scouring your faceplate, driving dust into every fold and wrinkle of your spacesuit. For 15 minutes you huddled and endured the buffeting. The scariest part was the incessant crackling and flashing of miniature lightning bolts nipping at you and your rover, and the loud static on your radio that prevented you from calling for help.

Could this really happen? According to NASA's Vision for Space Exploration, astronauts are going to visit Mars in the decades ahead. And when they get there, dust devils will be waiting. continue



photo:science.nasa.gov

More Dust Devil Images and Clips by Rover Spirit

Could you imagine being an astronaut from another world landing on Earth 65 million years ago. You pop open the door after travelling 40 years at the speed of light and say to your audience back home (who are now thousands of years removed from the people you left when your ship launched) "That's one great leap etc" . Then you turn around while taking out your 100 megapixel digital camera to photograph the landscape, and there staring at you in the face with a twinkle in his eye is a huge 40 foot T Rex. Sorry, but planet exploration is for robots.

Sending robots is definitely easier than sending humans in Mars..It will not be that easy to send Marsian Astronaut due to it's a long trip to get their it's like 200 times the distance between Earth and the moon..It will be so extremely hard for them. Also they will be totally exposed in radiation..the psychological thing also being out their for say two to three years..The size of the spaceship that will be use in the mission it will be definitely big than usual one due to they have to carry food,water,fuel,life support system and others..It will be tough to launch that kind size of ship mainly due to atmospheric drag and gravitational force..the construction site perhaps the idea is to build it in the international space station..Back to date like when the first man landed on the moon with less technology..Humans will do what it takes to get their..Humans just can resist to take the challenge in going to the red planet now with advanced tech...But it will still take decades to perhaps accomplish the mission..