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PIA16455: Atmospheric Pressure Patterns Before and During Dust Storm
This graph compares a typical daily pattern of changing atmospheric pressure (blue) with the pattern during a regional dust storm hundreds of miles away (red). The data are by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) on NASA's Curiosity rover.
 Target Name:  Mars
 Mission:  Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) 
 Spacecraft:  Curiosity
 Instrument:  REMS 
 Product Size:  2999 x 2249 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  JPL 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA16455.tif (20.24 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA16455.jpg (324.8 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

This graph compares a typical daily pattern of changing atmospheric pressure (blue) with the pattern during a regional dust storm hundreds of miles away (red). The data are by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) on NASA's Curiosity rover. Pressure is a measure of the amount of air in the whole column of atmosphere sitting above the rover.

The altered pattern in pressure variation during the storm results from changes both in large-scale atmospheric heating due to dust in the air and from more local atmospheric heating due to an increase in local dustiness.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the rover.

For more information about Curiosity and its mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/CAB(CSIC-INTA)/FMI/Ashima Research

Image Addition Date:
2012-11-27