"If the dust originates from the atmosphere, this suggests we are missing some fundamental process in the Martian atmosphere."
Source: Laila Andersson of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospherics and Space Physics (CU LASP), Boulder, Colorado -- following the news that NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft has observed two unexpected phenomena in the Martian atmosphere: an unexplained high-altitude dust cloud and aurora that reaches deep into the Martian atmosphere.