For centuries, we wondered what was on
the surface of Mars. But today, with a
fleet of spacecraft in orbit and rovers
active on the ground, we know more about
Mars than any other planet beyond Earth.
We've seen huge canyons that once held
water, observed distant dust storms, and
even found some intriguing signs of life
that may once have existed there. These
discoveries were all things we were
actually looking for. And yet, the red
planet continues to surprise us, too.
Recently, NASA's Perseverance rover
detected something completely
unexpected,
something it wasn't designed to
investigate, something we'd almost lost
hope of finding.
That tiny crackle, like a jack cable
being pulled out of a speaker, could be
the first ever evidence of lightning on
Mars.
A phenomenon that no matter how hard
we've surged, even with specially
designed missions, we have never
detected before.
So why is it only now that we've been
able to hear it? What does this mean for
the red planet? And could there be
implications for future manned missions?
I'm Alex Mccoan and you're watching
Astramm. Today we're traveling to Mars
to investigate a sound so small it was
almost ignored. A tiny crackle that
could hold the key to how Mars's
atmosphere works, how its storms form,
its surface chemistry, and whether
humans could one day safely walk its
surface.
The first lander to touch down on the
Martian surface was NASA's Viking 1 in
1976, shortly followed by its sister
probe, Viking 2, a few months later.
These two landers provided the first
close-up color images of the Martian
surface we've ever seen, revealing a red
brown landscape under a dusty orange
sky. Since then, we've successfully sent
eight more landers and rovers to the
surface. Two of which are still active
at the time of publishing this video.
NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance
rovers. Between them, these remarkable
robotic explorers have dramatically
increased our understanding of Mars.
They've shown that the planet was once
covered in liquid water, and that vast
reservoirs are still hidden, locked up
in ice just below the surface. Our
intrepid rovers have had to deal with
all kinds of Martian weather, from
glaring sunshine to fierce winds and
raging dust storms. But one thing's long
been missing. Lightning. We've seen it
on other planets. Voyager 1 spotted
bright flashes on Jupiter when it flew
past in 1979. And more recently, NASA's
Juno probe captured stunning images of
Jovian lightning up close. On Saturn,
storms can stretch for thousands of
kilome and unleash lightning 10,000
times more powerful than Earth's. One
colossal lightning storm observed in
2009 by the Cassini spacecraft raged for
a full 8 months. But lightning has never
been detected on our planetary neighbor
Mars until now. And that discovery is a
really big deal because lightning is far
more than a simple weather event.
On Earth, lightning plays a vital role
in the chemistry of our atmosphere. It
forms when ice particles collide inside
storm clouds, causing them to gain or
lose electrons and become positively or
negatively charged.
As that electrical charge keeps growing,
the air between the cloud and the ground
can no longer hold it back. And the
electricity suddenly discharges as a
lightning bolt, releasing so much
energy, the surrounding air is briefly
heated to over 27,000°
C. That's hotter than the surface of the
sun. The burst of energy is so intense
it can break apart nitrogen and oxygen
molecules in the air which then
recombine into nitrogen oxides. These
dissolve in rainwater and enter the soil
where they act as natural fertilizer
helping plants to grow.
As well as its role in the nitrogen
cycle, lightning produces ozone which
helps shield our planet from dangerous
UV rays. UV rays aren't the only solar
radiation you might need shielding from.
And because our sun produces a huge
amount of energy, it's very dangerous to
look at directly, no matter how much you
might want to. And this year, you might
well want to, as there will be a total
solar eclipse visible from Iceland,
Greenland, Russia, and Spain on the 12th
of August, one of nature's most
extraordinary spectacles. Even if you
can't get to the path of totality, if
you're in the eastern US or Canada, the
UK, Europe, or Northern Africa, you will
still be able to spot a huge bite being
taken out of the sun as the moon passes
between us and our star. I can't wait to
see the eclipse, and I'll be heading out
to Spain myself in August. But if you
you'll get 10% off your purchase. Now, back to the role of lightning on Earth.
It's even possible that lightning played
a role in the origin of life itself by
converting atmospheric gases into vital
organic molecules such as RNA and amino
acids. So in other words, lightning is
far more than a flash of light in the
sky. It is a critical part of Earth's
natural systems. And if lightning plays
an important role in atmospheric
chemistry on Earth, it's likely the same
will be true on Mars. Right.
Well, unlike Earth, Saturn, or Jupiter,
with their dense atmospheres and
towering storm systems, Mars' atmosphere
is incredibly thin, more than 100 times
lighter than Earth's. This makes
lightning, as we know it, unlikely. But
storm clouds aren't the only place where
lightning occurs. Here on Earth, under
the right conditions, lightning can also
be generated by volcanic eruptions.
This incredible footage was captured by
a tour guide in 2023 of Guatemala's
Fuego volcano. As ash and dust particles
swirl around inside the volcanic cloud,
they collide, generating an electrical
charge, just like ice particles in a
storm cloud. And if there's one thing
Mars has a lot of, it's dust. Martian
winds whip it up into towering dust
devils up to 19 km tall. Some scientists
estimate that there could be as many as
145 million of them racing across the
surface of the red planet on any given
day. And that's not all. Giant dust
storms also occur, occasionally growing
so large they engulf the entire planet.
The two Viking probes saw two of these
global dust storms in their first year
alone. Driven by seasonal heating,
rising plumes of warm air create
continentsized storms. But once every
three Mars years, about 5 and 1/2 Earth
years, they combine and become large
enough to cover the entire planet.
Scientists aren't really sure why these
yearsong gaps between storms exist, but
they suspect it's to do with the fact
that Mars' orbit is less circular than
Earth's. It means that during the
southern hemisphere summer, the planet
is close to the sun and therefore
significantly hotter. Although wind
speeds here only reach about 100 km/h,
about half the maximum we see here on
Earth, the dust is so fine that this is
enough to almost completely block out
the sun. Not good for solar powered
rovers on the surface. In fact, on the
10th of June 2018, this spelled the end
for the Opportunity rover, who never
managed to power back on after a global
storm.
But whilst bad for mission planners, all
that swirling dust provides the perfect
conditions for lightning to occur. And
for decades, scientists have been trying
to detect it. The European Space Ay's
Mars Express spent 5 years scanning
Martian dust storms for any hint of
electrical activity and found nothing.
The Scaperelli module, also sent by was
equipped with a special instrument to
measure electrical activity in the
Martian atmosphere, but sadly it never
got the chance. As it approached the
surface in October 2016, a software
malfunction caused its parachute to
jettison too early and the module
crashed. The high-rise camera on NASA's
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured
this view of the crash site.
But now, finally, after decades of
searching, the Perseverance rover has
found tantalizing evidence of lightning
on the red planet. And it was a lucky
break because as I mentioned earlier,
Perseverance wasn't looking for
lightning at all. Its super cam
instrument is designed to analyze
Martian rocks by zapping them with a
laser and analyzing the light and sound
produced by the blast. But along with
the sounds that bounce back from rocks,
the super cam microphone detected a
strange crackle and pop.
The finding was so intriguing, a team of
Mars scientists led by Batiste Shed from
France's Institute of Research in
Astrophysics and Planettology
painstakingly trolled through nearly 45
months worth of data from the Supercam
microphone. In total, they found 55
acoustic pops recorded over two Martian
years, and most occurred during storms
or within dust devils. It was looking
more and more like this could be the
sound of Martian lightning. But are
these tiny pops really evidence? Could
there be another explanation?
In their paper published in Nature in
November 2025, Sheed and the team
systematically assessed possible
alternatives.
Perhaps the lightning discharge came
from the rover itself, but the sound
doesn't match any known rover noises.
Maybe a grain of dust hit the microphone
or his housing causing the unusual pop,
but that can't account for the
electrical interference.
What else could the team do to test
whether what Perseverance recorded
really could be lightning?
Well, they decided to recreate the
conditions of a Martian storm here on
Earth. Using a replica of the super cam
instrument, they generated a static
charge by rubbing particles together and
then recorded what the microphone
detected. The result was incredibly
similar to the electromagnetic spike
heard by Perseverance. After analyzing
all this data, the team concluded that
the 55 mysterious pops were best
explained by the electrical discharge of
lightning on Mars.
And that's not all. In February 2026,
another team added weight to the
argument. While sifting through a
decade's worth of data from NASA's Mars
Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or
Maven spacecraft, scientists from
Charles University in the Czech Republic
found one other tiny piece of evidence,
a whistler wave. On Earth, whistler
waves are low-frequency radio signals
that travel along the magnetic field
lines of our planet's magneettosphere
before dispersing. But what's most
interesting about them is what creates
them. They are a telltale sign and
arguably proof of lightning.
We've seen them on other planets with
both strong magnetic fields and
atmospheric electrical discharges,
Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune, but never
before on Mars. Why? Well, Mars doesn't
have a global magneettosphere like these
other planets because the internal
activity that creates them stopped
billions of years ago. What it does
have, however, is localized custic
fields. These are much stronger in the
southern hemisphere than the north. And
it's now thought whistler waves can
travel along these field lines when
lightning like activity in dust storms
takes place.
The question now becomes, is this a
common occurrence?
So far, out of more than 100,000 MVA
data points, the team has only found one
whistler wave in Mars's ionosphere, and
it lasted just 0.4 4 seconds. It's only
in very specific conditions that these
waves can be created given the transient
nature of Mars's magnetic fields. And
Maven has to be in exactly the right
place at the right time, which is hard
if not impossible to predict.
But just because we don't see it all the
time doesn't mean it's not there. This
fleeting signal, combined with
Perseverance's discoveries, is telling
us that there is almost certainly
lightning there. Martian lightning may
not be powerful bolts like those seen on
Earth. It's closer to a static charge,
the kind you get when you walk across a
carpet in socks and then touch a metal
doornob. But with so many storms and
dust devils raging across the surface,
it's likely that millions of these tiny
static charges occur. And that has big
implications for our understanding of
Mars. You see, when dust is electrically
charged, it's easier for wind to lift it
up. And it also alters how the particles
clump together. So the lightning isn't
just a product of Martian weather. It
helps drive the storms themselves.
The presence of lightning could also
solve a long-standing mystery. The
origin of Mars's oxidizing chemicals.
Mars is full of highly reactive
substances known as oxidants. For
decades, scientists have been detecting
them in Martian soil and atmosphere. But
until now, they couldn't fully explain
how they were being produced. These
newly discovered electrical discharges
may provide the missing mechanism. Even
though Martian lightning is far weaker
than Earth's, it still carries enough
energy to break molecules apart and
create new ones, including hydrogen
peroxide and pchlorates, both of which
are found in abundance on Mars. This has
important implications for the search of
life because these harsh oxidants
rapidly destroy organic molecules,
effectively sterilizing the surface. So
even if Mars once hosted life, the
chemical traces it left behind could
have been altered or erased. To have any
realistic chance of finding evidence of
life on Mars, future missions will need
to look below the surface, targeting
rocks and sediments that are protected,
buried, or shielded from the harsh
oxidizing environment on the surface.
But that's not all. The discovery also
has implications for Perseverance as
well as other rovers active on the
surface. Because when dust is
electrically charged, it becomes clingy.
If you've ever accidentally spilled the
contents of a bean bag, you'll know how
clingy those tiny polyyrene beads can
be. As the beads collide with each
other, they generate a static charge,
causing them to cling to your hands,
your clothes, the broom, everything. On
Mars, electrically charged dust can
cling to the surface of the rovers,
persistently coating their instruments
and solar panels. In December 2022,
NASA's poor Insight lander had
accumulated so much dust on its solar
panels, it lost power completely and
never powered back up again. Thankfully,
the next generation of landers are
already in the works with Rosalyn
Franklin rover currently due to launch
in 2028 and ISRO developing the Mars
lander mission, also known as Mangalian
2, which will set off for the red planet
in 2030.
And what's arguably more exciting is the
fact that in the future rovers and
landers might not be alone on the
surface. Both NASA and SpaceX have
ambitious plans to send humans to Mars
within the next decade. In fact, SpaceX
is planning to send its first Starships
to the red planet at some point in 2026.
And that's Arteimus missions to the moon
are well underway. Yes, it's not Mars,
but their success will be vital for
testing technologies needed to send
humans further. They will allow
scientists to iron out any kinks in
setting up long-term settlements and
life support systems on a world beyond
our planet. But one thing the moon can't
help us plan for is dealing with this
new found Martian lightning. Is it
something astronauts need to worry
about? The good news first, the first
human to set foot on Mars is unlikely to
be struck down by a bolt of lightning as
it is far too weak. But frequent small
electrical discharges could interfere
with astronaut's equipment. So while
Martian lightning may not be as
impressively powerful as the bolts we
get to witness here on Earth, the
discovery represents a genuine
engineering challenge for future
missions. To truly understand Martian
lightning, much more research will be
needed. But this chance discovery by the
Perseverance rover is enough to open up
new avenues of research and show that
even after decades of close observation,
Mars keeps surprising us. Who knows what
the rovers will discover next?
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