In a groundbreaking achievement, NASA’s Perseverance rover has captured the first-ever visible light auroras from the surface of Mars, marking a historic milestone in planetary science. The discovery, made in coordination with NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) orbiter, offers new insight into the Red Planet’s atmospheric interactions and opens up exciting possibilities for future human explorers.
Auroras have been detected on Mars before. However, unlike in this artist's illustration, they do not normally emit visible light. Image credit: Emirates Mars Mission
The event unfolded on March 15, 2024, when the Sun unleashed a powerful solar flare accompanied by a coronal mass ejection (CME) — a massive eruption of gas and magnetic energy. The storm of solar particles reached Mars just days later, triggering a spectacle in the Martian sky that the Perseverance rover captured using its SuperCam spectrometer and Mastcam-Z camera.
"This exciting discovery opens up new possibilities for auroral research and confirms that auroras could be visible to future astronauts on Mars' surface," said Elise Knutsen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oslo and lead author of the study published in Science Advances.
Unlike Earth, which has a global magnetic field that funnels solar particles toward the poles to create familiar green auroras, Mars lacks such a protective barrier. This means auroras on the Red Planet — specifically solar energetic particle (SEP) auroras — spread more broadly across the sky. Although SEP auroras had previously been observed in ultraviolet by MAVEN since 2014, this marked the first time they were seen in visible light from the Martian surface.
Faint green light from auroras can be detected in both parts of this photo captured by Perseverance's Mastcam-Z on March 18, 2024. However, the color is more obvious when the glare from Mars' moon Phobos is removed (on the left hand side). Image credit: Knutsen et al., Sci. Adv. 11, eads1563 (2025)
The discovery didn’t happen by chance. Knutsen’s team used predictive modeling to determine the optimal angles for the rover’s instruments and waited for the right solar event. The March 15 CME provided that opportunity. NASA's Moon to Mars Space Weather Analysis Office and the Community Coordinated Modeling Center played a crucial role in identifying and alerting mission teams about the impending solar storm.
At the University of California, Berkeley, MAVEN space physicist Christina Lee, upon receiving the solar storm alert, issued a Mars Space Weather Alert Notification. This coordinated response enabled both Perseverance and MAVEN to synchronize their observations.
"When we saw the strength of this one," Knutsen said, "we estimated it could trigger aurora bright enough for our instruments to detect."
A few days after the CME, the Perseverance rover documented a near-uniform green aurora at 557.7 nanometers — the same wavelength emitted by oxygen atoms in Earth's auroras. MAVEN's SEP instrument confirmed the presence of solar energetic particles, with additional corroboration from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission.
"This was a fantastic example of cross-mission coordination," said Shannon Curry, principal investigator for MAVEN at the University of Colorado Boulder. "We’re thrilled to have finally gotten a sneak peek of what astronauts will be able to see there someday."
NASA researchers say this successful observation technique opens up new methods for studying Martian auroras from the surface — a valuable tool as the agency prepares to send humans to Mars.
"A better understanding of auroras and the conditions around Mars that lead to their formation are especially important as we prepare to send human explorers there safely," said Katie Stack Morgan, acting project scientist for Perseverance at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
As the Sun approaches the peak of its 11-year cycle, scientists anticipate more solar storms — and with them, more chances to study the vibrant, alien lightshows illuminating the Martian night.
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