Global Storm on Mars

GTM writes: "The surface of the Red Planet is currently hidden by the most impressive dust storm seen in decades. Mars Global Surveyor and Hubble provide us with pictures, see the press release here."

lots of good stuff to learn

[superflex]

manned exploration of mars is certainly a good long way away, but this is certainly something that needs to be kept in mind. as far as that goes, unmanned surface explorer designers would probably want to know about it too...

considering NASA/JPL has plans for inflatable rovers [nasa.gov] for surface exploration, it might be good for them to know how these craft will peform in high wind dust storms.

right now, the more immediate question is how will this affect the aerobraking [yahoo.com] performance of the Mars Odyssey [nasa.gov] spacecraft which is supposed to arrive in 11 days. Last week, there was an article/discussion [slashdot.org] on aerobraking, if you feel like browsing it at +3 and seeing if anyone had something really intelligent to say about it.