Global Dust Storm Could Hit Mars This Month, Threatens NASA's Rovers

A global dust storm might sweep across the planet Mars within this month or the next few months. This threatens the NASA's rovers, Opportunity and Curiosity.

James Shirley, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California explained that Mars will begin the midpoint of its current dust storm season on October 29th of this year. He further said that the global dust storm will start within a few weeks or months of this date.

A dust storm is a meteorological phenomenon wherein the turbulent wind carries clouds of fine dust, sand and soil in arid and semi-arid regions or even on planets in space. The fine particles are blown by saltation and suspension, which is a process that moves soil from a place and deposits it in another place.

According to NASA, the most recent global dust storm on Mars happened in 2007. This diminished the solar power to two NASA Mars rovers, the Spirit and the Opportunity, With the coming global dust storm, it will also affect the solar powering NASA's rovers, Opportunity and Curiosity. It will also block the planet Mars from the view of the orbiting spacecraft.

John Callas, the project manager for Spirit and Opportunity said that the global dust storm in 2007 was the first foremost threat to the rovers since landing. He added that they had to take special measures to enable their survival for many weeks with little sunlight to keep them powered. The rovers are powered up for few minutes every day that keeps them warm. Then, shut down the next day without communicating with Earth. During the dust storm, the rovers were just completely on their own, according to Callas.

The dust storms occurred nine times on the Red Planet since 1924. The five most recent planetary storms were identified in 1977, 1982, 1994, 2001 and 2007.