As NASA's Juno spacecraft flew towards Jupiter, it accidentally uncovered a bizarre phenomenon of clouds of fast-moving dust, blowing away from Mars and bombarding the entire inner solar system, including the Earth.

NASA scientists first took notice when streams of particles, which they originally mistook for leaking fuel, blocked Juno’s star-charting cameras. Later they found out that the unusual trails were actually pieces of Juno itself alongside the Martian dust, whipping throughout the inner solar system, that chipped them away. 

NASA's research stated that they used Juno’s cameras to track the distribution and trajectory of the dust clouds within the solar system and revealed that it is actually from Mars. The huge amount of dust even makes its way to Earth’s atmosphere.

Juno, serving as a proverbial canary, could help keep future spacecraft safe now that NASA better understands these cosmic dust and where they’re coming from.