For months now Marshas been engulfed by a great dust storm, the biggestseen raging across th Red Planet i decades.As a result, these two Hubble Space Telescop stormwatch images from late June andearly September offer dramatically contrasting view of the martian surface.At left, the onset of smaller "seed" storms can be seen nearthe Hellas basin(lower right edge of Mars) and th northern polar cap.A similar surface view at right, taken over two months later,shows the fully developed extent of the obscuring global dust storm.The storm is reported to be waning, but planet-wide effects such as thewarming of the uppe martianatmosphere and cooling of the surface arestill being monitored daily b instruments on board the Mars GlobalSurveyor spacecraft.The present condition of the martian atmosphere i alsoimportant to the aerobraking MarsOdyssey spacecraft, scheduled to arriveat the Red Planet next week.
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