A pair of eagle-eyed NASA spacecraft — the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) and Hubble Space Telescope — are giving amazed astronomers scientists a ringside seat to the biggest global dust storm seen on Mars in several decades. The Martian dust storm, larger by far than any seen on Earth, has raised a cloud of dust that has engulfed the entire planet for the past three months. As the Sun warms the airborne dust the upper atmospheric temperature has been raised by about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. This abrupt onset of global warming in Mars’ thin atmosphere is happening at the same time as the planet’s surface has chilled precipitously under the constant dust shroud.