New Type of Dust in Martian Atmosphere

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New Type of Dust in Martian Atmosphere Discovered

A group of French and Russian scientists, including three MIPT specialists, has discovered a new peculiarity of the Martian atmosphere. The scientists had analyzed satellite-acquired data and concluded that the dust particles in the planet’s atmosphere can be of two types. The scientific article which presents the results of the research in detail has been published in the magazine Icarus (in English). A more simplified Russian version is available at the website of the Space Research Institute.

The Russian contributors to the research, Anna Fedorova, Alexander Rodin and Oleg Korablev, are the specialists of MIPT and SRI (IKI) RAS. These scientists and their French colleagues from the Paris Observatory and LATMOS research laboratory have carried out a simultaneous analysis of the ultraviolet and infrared atmospheric extinctions from SPICAM, the spectrometer on the board of the orbital station Mars Express.

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