MRO MARCI Weather Report for the week of 22 December 2008 – 28 December 2008

Captioned Image Release No. MSSS-61 — 31 December 2008 http://www.msss.com/msss_images/2008/12/31/

CLICK to play Quicktime Movie (9.1 MB) NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

Martian weather between 22 December 2008 and 28 December 2008:

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

MARCI has now returned to regular imaging after coming through conjunction. However, some data was lost this past week due to a lost Deep Space Network (DSN) pass. This occurred for some data on December 23-24 and accounts for the large data gaps seen on these days in the movie.

There proved to be quite a bit of weather activity on Mars this past week. Most prominently, there were several large, regional dust storms in the Acidalia/Deuteronilus regions. Disperse dust and water ice clouds continued to sweep through most of the northern mid- and high-latitudes throughout the week. Local dust storms occurred throughout the southern mid-latitudes as well. There was also dust storm activity in Hellas and just northwest of Hellas during the latter half of the week. Water ice clouds were especially concentrated over the major shield volcanoes and Valles Marineris this past week, while diffuse water ice clouds spanned almost the entire planet. MER-B (Opportunity) was covered by scattered water ice clouds throughout the week, while MER- A (Spirit) saw fewer clouds.

Earlier Mars Weather Reports are available HERE.

More at www.msss.com