NASA's Curiosity rover captures images of Martian dust storm
Washington, June 21 : With NASA engineers yet to make contact with the Opportunity Mars rover due to a massive storm on the Red Planet, scientists are pinning their hopes on learning more about Martian dust storms from images captured by the Curiosity probe.
As of Tuesday morning, the Martian dust storm had grown in size and was officially a "planet-encircling" (or "global") dust event, NASA said in a statement on Wednesday.
Though Curiosity is on the other side of Mars from Opportunity, dust has steadily increased over it, more than doubling over the weekend, NASA said.
The US space agency said the Curiosity Rover this month used its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, to snap photos of the intensifying haziness of the surface of Mars caused by the massive dust storm.
For NASA's human scientists watching from the ground, Curiosity offers an unprecedented window to answer some questions. One of the biggest: Why do some Martian dust storms last for months and grow massive, while others stay small and last only a week?
"We don't have any good idea," said Scott Guzewich, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Curiosity, he pointed out, plus a fleet of spacecraft in the orbit of Mars, will allow scientists for the first time to collect a wealth of dust information both from the surface and from space.
The last storm of global magnitude that enveloped Mars was in 2007, five years before Curiosity landed there.
The current storm has starkly increased dust at Gale Crater, where the Curiosity rover is studying the storm's effects from the surface.
But it poses little risk to the Curiosity rover, said Curiosity's engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
However, there was still no signal from the Opportunity rover, although a recent analysis of the rover's long-term survivability in Mars' extreme cold suggests Opportunity's electronics and batteries can stay warm enough to function.
Regardless, the project does not expect to hear from Opportunity until the skies begin to clear over the rover.
The dust storm is comparable in scale to a similar storm observed by Viking I in 1977, but not as big as the 2007 storm that Opportunity previously weathered.
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Allahabad HC orders probe into 'reinstatement' of teacher in UP's Barabanki
Lucknow (PTI): The Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court on Friday ordered a probe by the special task force (STF) into alleged irregularities in the rejoining of a teacher at City Intermediate College in Barabanki, observing that the reinstatement appeared to be prima facie illegal.
The court also directed the recovery of the salary paid to the teacher during the disputed period.
A bench of Justice Rajeev Singh passed the order on a petition filed by the college management committee. The court expressed doubts over the roles of the District Inspector of Schools (DIOS), Barabanki, the college principal and the teacher concerned and hence, directed a detailed inquiry into the matter.
Taking note of alleged manipulation of records and misleading submissions, the court ordered the immediate transfer of the Barabanki DIOS to ensure a fair probe. It also directed the initiation of disciplinary proceedings against the then joint director of education of the Ayodhya division.
In its order, the court found that the teacher, Abhay Kumar, was initially appointed as an assistant teacher in 2018 but joined an Eklavya Model Residential School in Chhattisgarh as a lecturer in June 2024 without obtaining permission from the management. His subsequent request to retain the lien was rejected.
Despite this, he was allowed to rejoin the Barabanki College in September 2025 on the directions of the joint director of education and the DIOS, and was even paid the salary for October 2025. The court termed the rejoining "wholly illegal" and lacking any legal basis.
The bench also expressed concern over lapses in communication within the education department and directed the Uttar Pradesh chief secretary to ensure that official orders are communicated through email and WhatsApp as well, to prevent disputes.
The matter is next listed for hearing on May 28 when a compliance report is sought.
