On rare occasions, scientists have witnessed the growth of sandstorms Dust events across the planetit covers almost all of Mars. One of these planet-sized dust storms carrying NASA’s solar-powered Opportunity spacecraft Until the end in 2018.
Since both are nuclear-powered, NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance spacecraft need not worry about dust storms affecting their energy. But the solar-powered Ingenuity helicopter saw a general increase in background fog.
In addition to monitoring storms for the safety of NASA’s Mars mission, MRO has spent 17 years collecting valuable data on how and why these storms form. “We are trying to capture these storm patterns so that we can better predict when they will happen,” said Zurek. “We learn more about the Martian atmosphere with each one we observe.”
Learn more about the mission
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, manages the agency’s InSight program for directing the agency’s science mission in Washington. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, operated by the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space of Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including the cruise and landing phases, and supports the mission’s spacecraft operations.
Numerous European partners, including the French National Center for Space Studies (CNES) and the German Center for Aerospace (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. The National Center for Space Studies presented seismic experiments of internal structures (SIX) at NASA, with principal researcher at the IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). A significant contribution to the General Environmental Information System comes from the IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; Swiss Federal Polytechnic (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and the University of Oxford in England; and JPL. DLR provides a package of thermal flow and physical properties (HP3), with major contributions from the Center for Space Research (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronomy in Poland. The Centro de Astrobiology Center (CAB) in Spain supplies temperature and wind sensors.
JPL also manages the MRO and Mars Climate Probe instruments for the direction of NASA’s science mission in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space makes MRO. The Mars Climate Imaging Camera, or MARCI, was built and operated by Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego.
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