Stuck in a Martian StorM

NASA’s Opportunity rover has been stuck in one of the thickest dust storms ever observed on Mars

The dust storms that arise on Mars aren’t as disastrous as portrayed in the 2015 scifi blockbuster film The Martian, however, observations from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have recently shown a dust storm grow in size over the period of a week and a half. This storm even caused NASA to suspend science operations for its Opportunity rover, which was caught up in the middle of it.

"This is the ideal storm for Mars science," says Jim Watzin, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, United States. "We have a historic number of spacecraft operating at the Red Planet. Each offers a unique look at how dust storms form and behave – knowledge that will be essential for future robotic and human missions."

Mars is a harsh environment for humans, and one of the main reasons is because of its very thin atmosphere. Mars’ atmosphere is less than one per cent of Earth’s, and although this means the winds created aren’t as strong as Earth’s, sometimes a dust storm is created that can envelop the entire planet. These storms are thought to occur once every three to four Martian years, which is equivalent to six to eight Earth years.

This recent storm that has temporarily ceased Opportunity’s operations at one point covered 35 million square kilometres (14 million square miles) of dry Martian land, which is a quarter of the whole planet. With an event this large, NASA fully intends to have a fine network of instruments in different spacecraft dedicated to carefully studying the storm. Another ground-based rover that has seen the effects is NASA’s Curiosity. Currently residing in the Gale Crater, Curiosity has begun to detect an increase in the dust haze that blocks out sunlight. As Curiosity has a nuclear-powered battery, it doesn’t face the same troubles as the solar-powered Opportunity.

NASA also has two other orbiters at Mars that are providing unique scientific observations; this duo consists of the 2001 Mars Odyssey and the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) orbiters. Odyssey has a built-in infrared camera that can measure the dust levels on Mars, and MAVEN will watch any changes in the upper atmosphere and any loss of gas to space.

"Each observation of these large storms brings us closer to being able to model these events – and maybe someday being able to forecast them," says Richard Zurek, project scientist for the MRO. "That would be like forecasting El Niño events on Earth, or the severity of upcoming hurricane seasons." Although this storm presents an opportunity for Martian orbiters and rovers to analyse an extreme event, this comes at the risk of losing the Opportunity rover. As Opportunity runs primarily on solar-powered batteries, cutting off the sunlight could cause a huge problem. Fingers crossed that this long-standing rover lives to see another Martian day when the storm has subsided.