MRO MARCI Weather Report for the week of
28 May 2018 – 3 June 2018

Martian weather between 28 May 2018 and 3 June 2018:

The MARCI acquires a global view of the red planet and its weather patterns every day. Please click and play the movie (.mp4 file) to see how the weather on Mars changed during this time.

The most prominent weather events last week were two large regional dust storms over the northern hemisphere of Mars. The large arcuate-shaped dust storm, reported the previous week, propagated eastward over the northern mid-latitudes of Utopia Planitia before abating. By midweek, a new dust storm had formed over the Ares III landing site featured in the book, ‘The Martian’. The dust storm moved southward along the Acidalia storm-track into Xanthe Terra. By the end of the week, the storm covered an area from eastern Valles Marineris to north central Arabia Terra, equivalent to the combined area of the entire United States and Mexico.

More typical weather features were also spotted over the red planet. A number of local-scale dust storms occurred over northern Amazonis, Argyre, and Noachis Terra. Each afternoon, diffuse water-ice clouds were present over Tyrrhena Terra and the major shield volcanoes of Tharsis. The Opportunity rover in Endeavour Crater encountered exceptionally high dust levels at week’s end due to the large regional activity mentioned above. Meanwhile, the Curiosity rover in Gale Crater experienced storm-free skies each sol.

This week’s MARCI “movie” can be downloaded HERE (9.0 MB .mp4 file).

This week’s MARCI “movie” can be downloaded HERE (9.0 MB .mov file).

Earlier Mars Weather Reports are available HERE.

About the Movie:
The movie (a .mp4 file that you can click and play, above) was generated from images obtained by the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). During a nominal operational week, a total of about 273 MARCI images, taken in three of the camera’s seven color filter bands (420, 550, and 600 nanometer wavelengths), are map projected and mosaiced together to produce seven false-color daily global maps. These maps are then projected onto a sphere with north at the top and east to the right and with the mid-afternoon vantage point of an observer in the orbital plane (the imaginary plane that the planet draws out as it circles the Sun). Black areas in the movie are the result of data drops or high angle roll maneuvers by the spacecraft that limit the camera’s view of the planet. Equally-spaced blurry areas that run from south-to-north (bottom-to-top) result from the high off-nadir viewing geometry, a product of the spacecraft’s low-orbit, 250 km x 316 km (155 miles x 196 miles). The movie is rendered at a lower resolution than the intrinsic 1–2 km nadir resolution that the MARCI provides, so that it is practical to view and share via the Internet. The small white circles on these images of Mars indicate the locations of the Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity (on Meridiani Planum), and the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity (in Gale Crater). Other locations on Mars referenced in the weather report can be found by referring to the map below. Note that the still image of Mars depicted at the top of this page is a single frame from the movie.

Malin Space Science Systems, Inc., San Diego, California, U.S.A.