But the fifth, from June 2018, was different, and it happened to coincide with a colossal global dust storm sweeping across the planet, the very same storm that plunged NASA's solar powered Opportunity rover into darkness and silence for good. Dust storms do heat the atmosphere on their own, by absorbing sunlight, but the pattern here didn't match that explanation. Something else appeared to be going on, as though the solar particles and the dust storm were compounding each other's effects rather than acting independently. That is that Mars' atmosphere might respond to combinations of events in ways that studying solar activity or dust storms in isolation would never reveal. Source : NAM 2026 - First study hints solar storms may alter the weather during Martian dust storms