Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Mars Curiosity rover snaps dreamy images of drifting Martian clouds

By

NASA’s Perseverance rover may be grabbing all the headlines just now, but the space agency’s other active rover, Curiosity, continues to explore the red planet after arriving there almost a decade ago.

Recommended Videos

Like Perseverance, Curiosity’s initial mission length was set at two years, but NASA later decided to extend it indefinitely. Since then, the rover has stayed busy, investigating various Martian mysteries, examining rocks, climbing slopes, and even snapping selfies.

Related

Its latest treat for space fans came a few days ago when it beamed back some incredible images of Martian clouds.

Bobak Ferdowsi, who works at the California-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) that’s overseeing both the Curiosity and Perseverance rover missions, shared some of the images on Twitter.

“I cannot get over these Martian cloud photos from MarsCuriosity this week,” Ferdowsi wrote. “Can you imagine watching clouds drift by on Mars?”

I cannot get over these Martian cloud photos from @MarsCuriosity this week. Can you imagine watching clouds drift by on Mars?
📷: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS pic.twitter.com/p5QoSlPgHI

— Bobak Ferdowsi (@tweetsoutloud) March 6, 2021

The thin, wispy clouds on Mars confirm the existence of water in the red planet’s atmosphere, though scientists say it’s at a level around 1/1000th of Earth’s, and no rain ever falls.

The idea that Mars experiences weather systems surprises many people. It goes beyond just clouds, too, as evidenced by this extraordinary image of a dust devil occurring on the planet, captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as it passed overhead around 180 miles up.

Our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter often catches nature in action. Here, its HiRISE camera captures a whirlwind, often called a dust devil, traversing dunes. Details: https://t.co/j4qfFTMUkF pic.twitter.com/OZTdcoNbf0

— NASA Mars (@NASAMars) March 6, 2021

You may be interested to know that there’s even an account on Twitter offering updates on Mars’ weather that pulls its data from special instruments on the Curiosity rover and NASA’s InSight lander. Curiosity takes daily weather measurements from its location in Gale Crater in the southern hemisphere of Mars, near the planet’s equator.

Sol 3048 (2021-03-03), high -14C/7F, low -73C/-99F, pressure at 8.30 hPa, daylight 06:35-18:31 pic.twitter.com/NgADN9pHCN

— Mars Weather (@MarsWxReport) March 6, 2021

Also, Mars, like Earth, has four seasons, with white caps of water ice and carbon dioxide ice shrinking and growing through summer and winter at the poles.

“Evidence of climatic cycles exists, as water ice is formed in layers with dust between them,” the National Weather Service says on its website. “In addition, features near the south pole may have been produced by glaciers which are no longer present.”

It adds: “In general, Mars has highly variable weather and is often cloudy.  The planet swings from being warm and dusty to cloudy and cold.  Mars long ago was likely a warmer, wetter planet with a thicker atmosphere, able to sustain oceans or seas.”

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
NASA to help with the launch of Europe’s unlucky Mars rover
An artist's impression of the Rosalind Franklin rover on Mars.

An artist's impression of the Rosalind Franklin rover on Mars. ESA/Mlabspace

Europe's unlucky Mars rover, known as Rosalind Franklin, has gotten a boost thanks to a new cooperation agreement with NASA. The European Space Agency (ESA) had previously partnered with Russian space agency Roscosmos on the rover project, but that was suspended following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Now, NASA has formally agreed to contribute launch services and parts of the landing propulsion system to the project, aiming for a 2028 launch.

Read more
NASA selects 9 companies to work on low-cost Mars projects
This mosaic is made up of more than 100 images captured by NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter, which operated around Mars from 1976 to 1980. The scar across the center of the planet is the vast Valles Marineris canyon system.

NASA is expanding its plans for Mars, looking at not only a big, high-budget, long-term project to bring back a sample from Mars but also smaller, lower-cost missions to enable exploration of the red planet. The agency recently announced it has selected nine private companies that will perform a total of 12 studies into small-scale projects for enabling Mars science.

The companies include big names in aerospace like Lockheed Martin and United Launch Services, but also smaller companies like Redwire Space and Astrobotic, which recently landed on the surface of the moon. Each project will get a 12-week study to be completed this summer, with NASA looking at the results to see if it will incorporate any of the ideas into its future Mars exploration plans.

Read more
Meet NASA’s trio of mini moon rovers set to launch next year
Part of NASA’s CADRE technology demonstration, three small rovers that will explore the Moon together show off their ability to drive as a team autonomously – without explicit commands from engineers – during a test in a clean room at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in December 2023.

NASA is ramping up its plans for exploring the moon, not only in terms of preparing to send astronauts there but also rovers. There's the VIPER rover, which will search for water around the lunar south pole, and now NASA is introducing a trio of mini rovers called CADRE, or Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration. These will work together as a team to map the lunar surface, testing the possibilities of using rovers in groups for future exploration.

The rovers, developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, are just the size of a carry-on suitcase. They are designed to move independently but share data so they can cover more ground than a single rover could. They'll have to work over a lunar day, which is about two weeks, to map out features on the surface and look below ground using radar.

Read more