MRO MARCI Weather Report for the week of
11 March 2019 – 17 March 2019

Martian weather between 11 March 2019 and 17 March 2019:

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.

Last week on Mars, dust-lifting events continued over southern Aonia and Sirenum. The eastward movement of these storms lofted dust into the Argyre impact basin on multiple sols. The Hellas impact basin, on the other hand, was largely unobscured from atmospheric dust — making the floor discernible most afternoons. Moving our attention to the northern lowlands, a mixture of dust and water ice clouds remained along the receding seasonal north polar ice cap edge. Lee wave (water ice) clouds, known for their ripple-like appearance, were spotted trailing behind Tempe Terra and Alba Mons most afternoons. Orographic water ice clouds were also observed above the Tharsis Montes and Olympus Mons. The intrepid robotic explorers, InSight on Elysium Planitia and Curiosity in Gale Crater encountered storm-free skies all week.

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 Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity (in Gale Crater) and the InSight lander (in Elysium Planitia). 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.