NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor, which this month began its ninth year in orbit around Mars, continues to observe the Martian landscape.

The spacecraft’s camera has recorded seasonal patterns of clouds and dust within the atmosphere over the entire planet. In addition, other instruments on Mars Global Surveyor have provided information about atmospheric changes and year-to-year patterns on Mars as the mission has persisted. Daily mapping of dust abundance in Mars’ atmosphere by the Thermal Emission Spectrometer has shown dust over large areas during three Mars southern hemisphere summers in a row. However, the extent and duration of dust storms varied from year to year.

“Our prime mission ended in early 2001, but many of the most important findings have come since then, and even bigger ones might lie ahead,” says Tom Thorpe, project manager for Mars Global Surveyor at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. The orbiter is healthy and may be able to continue studying Mars for five to 10 more years, he said.

Mars Global Surveyor was launched Nov. 7, 1996, entered orbit around Mars Sept. 12, 1997, and returned the first Mars data Sept. 15, 1997. Beyond its own investigations, the orbiter provides support for other Mars missions, such as landing-site evaluations, atmospheric monitoring, communication relay and imaging of hardware on the surface.