Image Credit: NASA/JPL/ASU

Context image credit: NASA/JPL/MOLA
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Detailed information on this image is available at the THEMIS Data Releases website.

 

Please see the THEMIS Data Citation Note for details on crediting THEMIS images.

 

Like billowing smoke from a brush fire, clouds of dust are seen streaming off the edge of the martian south polar cap. The southern hemisphere is in the middle of its summer season and experiencing a multitude of small dust storms like this one. The net effect is an increasingly dusty atmosphere across the whole planet and with it, warmer atmospheric temperatures. Although much of the atmosphere is moderately dusty, this level of dust activity had no effect on the January 3rd, 2004 landing of the Mars Exploration Rover called Spirit.