Befitting the powerful Roman god of war for which Mars was named, the red planet’s ‘dust devils’ can be as lofty as five miles (eight kilometers) tall. A dust devil is a wind-generated vortex, or whirlpool in the atmosphere. Nearly every child has seen small whirlwinds that spin dust or leaves in spirals on Earth. Besides large ‘dust devils,’ the martian environment, from time to time, spawns huge dust storms that may cover nearly the entire planet. Both martian winds and dust devils, big and little, are constantly changing the planet’s environment. To expand knowledge of dust devils and the red planet’s feisty winds, NASA is simulating both of them in a laboratory at NASA Ames Research Center, located in California’s Silicon Valley.