<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=iso-8859-1"><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=iso-8859-1"><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=us-ascii"></head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=iso-8859-1"><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=us-ascii"><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=us-ascii"><div style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; "></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(47, 47, 47); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; color: #000000">"</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">PASADENA, Calif. -- A regional dust storm on Mars, tracked from orbit since Nov. 10, appears to be abating rather than going global.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(47, 47, 47); min-height: 14px; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(47, 47, 47); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">"During the past week, the regional storm weakened and contracted significantly," said Bruce Cantor of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. Cantor uses the Mars Color Imager camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to monitor storms on the Red Planet.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(47, 47, 47); min-height: 14px; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(47, 47, 47); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Effects of the storm on global air-pressure patterns have been detected at ground level by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(47, 47, 47); min-height: 14px; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(47, 47, 47); "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">"We are getting lots of good data about this storm," said Mark Richardson of Ashima Research, Pasadena, Calif. He is a co-investigator both on REMS and on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's Mars Climate Sounder instrument, which has been detecting widespread effects of the current storm on atmospheric temperatures.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; color: #000000">"</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial; min-height: 14px; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b>MARS RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER HIRISE IMAGES</b></span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial; min-height: 14px; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">All of the HiRISE images are archived here:</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(4, 51, 255); "><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px"><a href="http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/">http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/</a></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; color: #000000">.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial; min-height: 14px; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">More information about the MRO mission is available online at <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mro"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(4, 51, 255); ">http://www.nasa.gov/mro</span></a>.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial; min-height: 14px; "><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"></span><br></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; font-family: Arial; "><span style="font-family: Helvetica; "></span></div></body></html>