Tag: dust storms

Dark streaks on Mars may be caused by salts and melting ice

Researchers at the SETI Institute say that unusual dark streaks on sun-facing slopes on Mars, debated about for years, may be small landslides caused by a combination of salts and melting ice just below the surface. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/mars-dark-streaks-melting-ice-recurring-slope-lineae…

A combined map of almost 15,000 dust storms on Mars

Data in the world of astronomy is spread out in so many different places. There are archives for instruments on individual spacecraft and telescopes. Sometimes all that is needed to get new insight out of old data is to collect it all together and analyze a whole set rather than isolated instances. That is exactly what happened recently when a team…

Tomorrow is New Year’s Day on Mars

Mars Year 36 begins on February 7, 2021. If you’re looking for a reason to celebrate, here’s to a Happy New Year … on Mars. Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/mars-calendar-years-began-in-earth-year-1955…

What’s the weather like on Titan?

Most of the planets in our solar system have some sort of atmosphere and many have dynamic weather systems. But only one moon in the solar system, Saturn’s large moon Titan, can say the same. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/titan-saturns-moon-weather-seasons-methane-rain-storms…

Meet PitRanger: Tiny rover designed to probe the lunar underworld

Researchers have been busily building a prototype of a 33-pound (15 kg) lunar mini-robot, set to be the key instrument in a future mission aimed at capturing high-definition images of moon pits. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/meet-pitranger-a-tiny-rover-to-probe-lunar-underworld…

Powerful electrical events quickly alter surface chemistry on Mars and other planetary bodies

Thinking like Earthlings may have caused scientists to overlook the electrochemical effects of Martian dust storms. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-12-powerful-electrical-events-quickly-surface.html…

Mars is getting a new robotic meteorologist

Mars is about to get a new stream of weather reports, once NASA’s Perseverance rover touches down on Feb. 18, 2021. As it scours Jezero Crater for signs of ancient microbial life, Perseverance will collect the first planetary samples for return to Earth by a future mission. But the rover will also provide key atmospheric data that will help enable future…

Martian Dust Storms Parch the Planet By Driving Water Into Space

sciencehabit writes: Two years ago, a global dust storm veiled Mars. But although the storm took a toll, killing off NASA’s Opportunity rover, it also revealed that such storms play an important role in how the once-wet planet loses its water. In 2014, looking back at data from 2007, scientists noticed that the fluorescent fog of hydrogen in the martian upper…

Dust storms on Mars are tossing water from its atmosphere into space

Mars has dried out over the past 4 billion years, and that may be partly because water is lofted into the upper atmosphere by dust storms and then escapes into space Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2259487-dust-storms-on-mars-are-tossing-water-from-its-atmosphere-into-space/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…