Meteorite Storm( Sporadical bursts of faling micro-meteorites on Mars do accur, but they aren't as common as dust- and radiation storms, and pose no greater threat directly to habitat or to astronauts outside. They do however block totaly any communications on mars since they make hard-ionization just above the ground. Becouse of that - during meteorite storms players don't have the GPS, work order list, link with the nearest comm.tower and many other. On the other hand - Meteorite Storms make a beutiful view...especialy at night! )
One of the unmentioned phenomena accuring at mars are the Meteorite Storms.
Becouse Mars has very thing atmosphere, not all space-debrea is beying burn...some of them sporadically makes to the ground.
On many cases we can predicts when the next meteorite shower accurs.
On the other hand - sometimes we don't know about that meteorite hive and when mars gets in position it get's then a rapid bombardment with meteors.
Every equipement on Mars is protected from those small micrometeorites.
Becouse of that, and the fact that those storms are rare, the propability of any loss coused becouse by them is astronomicaly low.
But that doesn't mean they are safe. They do pose a threat...they can disable all communications on mars, which can lead to a disaster.
How does it work?
Since mars has no ionosphere, all radio signals must travel in the line of sight (they can't be bounced from the atmosphere as we do it on Earth for long-range communications).
Becouse of the thin atmosphere, the micrometeorites gets very close to the ground, and they leave behind them a trail of ionized plasma that is active for even up-to 2 sec.. (longer than on earth BTW). Some of the micrometoerites even do get hit at the ground.
Becouse of the heaviliy ionized plasma trail blocking the way of the radio wave, none of the signals gets threw - they gets blocked.
That is why we don't have the ability to communicate...which can be very anoying :-)
Graphical implementation in MCO:
Micrometeorites can't be seen. They are just to darn small.
What you can see is when everoy now-and-then one of them hits the ground.
There won't be any noise, therw won't be any crater, no damage...you would only notice that the dust is rapidly blowing from one spot. From your point of view it looks exactly as a GPR shoot...just 100x times smaller
![Wink ;)](http://hyperkat.com/scratchbox/Smileys/akyhne/wink.gif)
On the sky hovever...you could propably see meteor rain. Every and each meteor you see here cames from one point in the sky called "radiant". It's trully beutiful! On mars thin atmosphere it must looks even more spectactular!
![](http://www.google.pl/url?source=imgres&ct=img&q=http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro/images//20070809_perseids_big.jpg&sa=X&ei=Y73pTMvVIYyUOs6WvIoO&ved=0CAQQ8wc&usg=AFQjCNE6eOFLjkOZtvaMS7Zv1goKU42yfg)
Base would be equiped (at the comm.&weather module) with a meteorite detector (the sameone used in space probes like pionier 10 & 11). You won't get a warning before it starts, but at least, you woult know that it's happening right now.
(P.S. Sorry for my errors in the text. Iam typing on someones else laptop right now)