Harbinger of the dust storm season on Mars
Harbinger of the dust storm season on Mars
The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board Mars Express acquired the data used to create this true-colour image on 3 April 2018 during orbit 18,039. It shows a harbinger of the Martian dust storm season, which will be particularly intense this year. Here, a local dust storm front north of Utopia Planitia and south of the ice cap on the North Pole is visible. The image width is approximately 200 kilometres, and north is on the right. The left-hand half of the image shows a typical landscape encountered on the northern subpolar plains, where numerous dune fields have formed. In late May, another, much larger storm developed southwest of this region in Arabia Terra, which is located in the transitional area between the northern lowlands and the southern highlands of Mars. It developed into a global, planet-wide dust storm in just a few weeks. It is one of the most powerful storms that has ever been observed on Mars. It is currently being observed by the ESA (Mars Express, ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter) and NASA (2001 Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN)) spacecraft from their orbits around the Red Planet.