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Dust Storm
sranderson
post Oct 18 2005, 05:47 PM
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Spaceweather (www.spaceweather.com) is reporting a dust storm on Mars visible in amateur telescopes. Hope we don't get too much dust-fall on the solar panels.... unsure.gif

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helvick
post Oct 18 2005, 06:28 PM
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Worth keeping an eye on but hopefully this will be short lived and not turn into a major storm. Chryse is a common location for "localised" storms so lets hope that the Rovers' luck holds out and this isn't the start of a big one.
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ljk4-1
post Oct 18 2005, 07:18 PM
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QUOTE (helvick @ Oct 18 2005, 01:28 PM)
Worth keeping an eye on but hopefully this will be short lived and not turn into a major storm. Chryse is a common location for "localised" storms so lets hope that the Rovers' luck holds out and this isn't the start of a big one.
*


On the other hand, it may provide a good science opportunity to study a Martian dust storm at the source.


--------------------
"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

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vikingmars
post Oct 18 2005, 08:18 PM
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mad.gif Hope this one will NOT reach any MER rover !
Here is how it really looked like at Viking 1 landing site at Chryse on sol 324 of its mission during a storm (with image taken on sol 282 as a comparison)...
Enjoy ! (if I may say...)
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sranderson
post Oct 18 2005, 09:12 PM
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Wow. Gets dark doesn't it. Are those piles of dust laying on the deck of the Viking Lander?

Scott
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helvick
post Oct 18 2005, 09:30 PM
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QUOTE (vikingmars @ Oct 18 2005, 09:18 PM)
mad.gif Hope this one will NOT reach any MER rover !
Here is how it really looked like at Viking 1 landing site at Chryse on sol 324 of its mission during a storm (with image taken on sol 282 as a comparison)...
Enjoy ! (if I may say...)
*


Ooh - nasty. Here's a chart of the Solar Panel output of a hypothetical MER-V1 roving around the Viking-1 site in 1976\77. If such a beast occurs Oppy and MER will see solar panel output reduce by about 75%.

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vikingmars
post Oct 19 2005, 05:22 AM
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QUOTE (sranderson @ Oct 18 2005, 09:12 PM)
Wow.  Gets dark doesn't it.  Are those piles of dust laying on the deck of the Viking Lander?

Scott
*


The piles of dust were made trough soil sampling activities when soil was put inside the collector funnels of the soil analysis and biology instruments. Wind effects were quicky observed as piles of dust moved swiftly across the deck of the Lander which had a grid painted on it to measure such movements... However, at the end of the mission, after having endured 5 big dust storms, the VL1 lander deck and covers were losing their gray blue color and parts of them were already looking red-brown...
biggrin.gif And, thanks to nuclear power energy, VL1 was still working !
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helvick
post Oct 19 2005, 10:25 AM
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Handy site to keep an eye on this storm feature as it develops (or fades).
Marswatch - Images and their Dust Monitoring page
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pioneer
post Oct 19 2005, 02:36 PM
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QUOTE (vikingmars @ Oct 18 2005, 08:18 PM)
mad.gif Hope this one will NOT reach any MER rover !
Here is how it really looked like at Viking 1 landing site at Chryse on sol 324 of its mission during a storm (with image taken on sol 282 as a comparison)...
Enjoy ! (if I may say...)
*

Neat. I wondered if the Viking landers were ever in a dust storm. Fortunately they had RTGs for power.
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fredk
post Oct 20 2005, 11:45 PM
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Update on dust storm here with short interview with a MER team member on weathering a storm.

From the latest images there, I estimate the storm is currently roughly 2000km from the closest rover, Oppy.
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sranderson
post Oct 22 2005, 02:32 PM
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Looks like the storm is getting bigger and it apparently has a green color when viewed from Earth. www.spaceweather.com
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SigurRosFan
post Oct 24 2005, 06:55 PM
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Latest storm picture from Ed Lomeli of Sacramento, CA:


--------------------
- blue_scape / Nico -
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ljk4-1
post Oct 24 2005, 07:00 PM
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QUOTE (sranderson @ Oct 22 2005, 09:32 AM)
Looks like the storm is getting bigger and it apparently has a green color when viewed from Earth. www.spaceweather.com
*


Reminds me of a National Geographic from 1955 which declared a giant greenish patch appearing on Mars to be a huge field of some kind of plant life.

Had Mariners 4, 6, and 7 found more than just a lot of craters back in the late 1960s (leading to the assumption of Mars as a "dead" planet) and instead imaged the volcanoes, canyons, and valleys found by Mariner 9 just a few years later, it is likely we would have gone ahead with manned Mars missions in the 1980s.


--------------------
"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

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ElkGroveDan
post Oct 24 2005, 08:04 PM
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QUOTE (SigurRosFan @ Oct 24 2005, 06:55 PM)
Latest storm picture from Ed Lomeli of Sacramento, CA:
*

I'll have to meet Ed. It looks like he's got a really nice telescope.


--------------------
If Occam had heard my theory, things would be very different now.
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deglr6328
post Oct 24 2005, 09:31 PM
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How frequently do global dust storms occur on Mars? I know there was one in 2001 and one in 1971 but that's all I'm aware of. Surely there must have been many more recorded in the last century.
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