---
title: "NASA Suggests Giant Dust Storms Blew Mars’ Water Into Space"
description: "New studies suggest that planet-wide dust storms and gigantic plumes called dust towers could have sucked up the planet's surface water."
date: "2019-12-03"
modified: "2019-12-03"
authors:
  - name: "Dan Robitzski"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/danrobitzski"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-dust-storms-mars-water-space"
categories:
  - "Astronomy"
  - "Mars"
  - "Science & Energy"
  - "Space"
tags:
  - "mars"
  - "NASA"
  - "space"
  - "the digest"
  - "water"
---

# NASA Suggests Giant Dust Storms Blew Mars’ Water Into Space

![New studies suggest that planet-wide dust storms and gigantic plumes called dust towers could have sucked up the planet's surface water.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/nasa-dust-storms-mars-water-space.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image:  NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS\</em\>*

## Blowout

NASA thinks it might know what happened to the water that vanished from the surface of Mars a long time ago: massive dust storms might have gradually rocketed it all into space.

It turns out that dust towers — gigantic cylindrical plumes that form during massive dust storms — could have carried [ancient surface water](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/deep-martian-groundwater>) up and out of Mars' atmosphere, *[Space.com ](<https://www.space.com/mars-dust-towers-global-storms-explained.html>)*[reports](<https://www.space.com/mars-dust-towers-global-storms-explained.html>). While the towers are still poorly understood, new NASA research shows they're capable of ejecting water vapor into space, potentially explaining away a long-standing mystery of our planetary neighbor.

## Bone Dry

A [NASA announcement](<https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7548>) about the planet-wide storms that give rise to dust towers, which can last for weeks at a time and grow to be 490 miles wide, pointed toward two new studies by Hampton University researcher Nicholas Heavens, [one of which](<https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019JE006110>) was published last month in the journal *JGR Planets* and [the other](<https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JAS-D-19-0042.1>) in the *Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences* in October.

The two studies focus on the weather patterns that NASA spacecraft observed during two planet-wide storms on Mars: one in 2007 and the 2018 storm that [disabled the Opportunity rover](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/opportunity-rover-nasa-feared-dead>).

Both studies are inconclusive when it comes to how dust towers form in the first place, but Heavens' research suggests that they played a large role in drying Mars' surface and then blanketing it in dried out dust.

**READ MORE:** [Massive 'Dust Towers' on Mars Look Like Supersized Versions of Earth's Thunderstorms](<https://www.space.com/mars-dust-towers-global-storms-explained.html>) \[*Space.com*\]

**More on Mars:** *[First Evidence of "Planet-Wide Groundwater System" on Mars Found](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/mars-groundwater-system-planet-wide>)*

## Author
Dan Robitzki is a senior reporter for Futurism, where he likes to cover AI, tech ethics, and medicine. He spends his extra time fencing and streaming games from Los Angeles, California.

### Author social links  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/danrobitzski>)