Perseverance Explorer Faces Dust Storm Season On Mars

Perseverance cameras display in the middle of a Martian dust storm (photo: dock. NASA)

JAKARTA Perseverance, NASA's robot rover, is climbing to the edge of Jezero Crater. This climb didn't go smoothly as Mars has been in the dust storm season for the past few weeks.

NASA says that the amount of dust continues to increase so that Perseverance's view becomes more blurred. Although this dust storm makes it difficult for the team and also the rover robot, NASA sees this storm as a unique opportunity to study dust.

"dust activity is usually the highest around this time," NASA said on its official website. "(dust storm) provides great opportunity for our atmospheric scientists to study how dust storms form, develop, and spread across planets."

Perseverance is equipped with a tool that can monitor weather conditions on Mars. This rover is equipped with Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) instruments to study the Martian atmosphere and provide regular weather reports.

This instrument will maximize the Perseverance team's knowledge of the dust storm season. To help Perseverance's observations, the team also regularly directs the Maskcam-Z instrument to the sky to assess atmospheric optical density.

According to the team's observations, this dust storm only occurred in several locations, but it did not explain what its territory was. Most likely, this dust storm will not hit the entire planet like in 2018 and is expected to end in the coming weeks.

"Every day we assess new atmospheric data. Hopefully the sky will be brighter as we continue to climb in the coming weeks, as we expect an amazing bottom view of the crater and the Jezero delta," NASA explained.