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Mars undergoes massive seasonal dust storms, which scientists are still working to understand.

Mars once ran red with rivers. The telltale tracks of past rivers, streams and lakes are visible today all over the planet. But about three billion years ago, they all dried up—and no one knows why.

Large amounts of dust that help give the Red Planet Mars its butterscotch-pink sky is being blown into the atmosphere by whirling dust devils and occasional but powerful gusts of wind, NASA's Persever

Mars massive dust storms that periodically engulf and continue to puzzle planetary scientists—and pose threats to future expeditions. NASA’s beloved solar-powered rover, Opportunity, was killed in the line of duty when a 2018 dust storm blotted out the sun.  Individual dust particles on Mars are very small and slightly electrostatic, so they stick to the surfaces they contact like Styrofoam packing peanuts. As such, the dust can potentially gum up delicate machinery and space suits.

At some point in its early history, Mars could have had a thin layer of icy, high-altitude clouds that caused a greenhouse effect, new research suggests. The theory helps explain one of the great puzzles of modern space science that the view from NASA’s Perseverance, which just landed on Mars, neatly sums up: Today Mars is a desert planet, and yet the rover is sitting right next to an ancient river delta. “Mars is important because it’s the only planet we know of that had the ability to support life—and then lost it.” The apparent contradiction has puzzled scientists for decades, es...