LITTLE ROCK — NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and two planet based explorers are tracking a huge dust storm, offering scientists an opportunity to study the planet’s weather as never before.
The regional dust storm was first spotted Nov. 10 in the planet’s southern hemisphere. Though the storm is considered regional, it’s big enough that it has lowered air pressure on either side of the planet and increased temperatures on the opposite pole by changing the atmosphere’s circulation.
Scientists are waiting to see whether it will develop into a “dust haze” that will engulf the entire planet.
“For the first time since the Viking missions of the 1970s, we are studying a regional dust storm both from orbit and with a weather station on the surface,” Rich Zurek, chief Mars scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, Calif., said in a written statement.
The storm has come within 900 miles of the Mars rover Opportunity, which landed on the planet in 2004 and depends on the sun for energy. On the other side of the planet is Curiosity, the 1-ton, nuclear powered mobile laboratory that landed this year.
If the dust engulfs Mars, it could reduce Opportunity’s energy supply. Curiosity’s power would not be affected. Photos from its cameras could be hazy, however, not unlike the images after it first landed on the planet in the summer.
If the dust storm expands, the two rovers, combined with the Reconnaissance Orbiter, should give scientists an unprecedented view.
Front Section, Pages 3 on 11/26/2012