NASA’s Mars Rover Records Lightning on Mars for the First Time But It Sounds Nothing Like Thunder

Scientists have caught Mars's atmosphere crackling with static, uncovering evidence of miniature lightning in its dust storms.

When a dust devil passed over NASA’s Perseverance rover in 2021, scientists expected to hear the hiss of sand and the rush of Martian wind. Instead, they caught a faint pop. They now believe this is the sound of electricity discharging in Mars’s thin air.

“This is like mini-lightning on Mars,” said Baptiste Chide of the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetary Science in Toulouse, France, lead author of the new study published in Nature.

These aren’t quite like the flashes we’re used to on Earth, they’re much smaller and restricted by the thin Martian atmosphere rather than blazing streaks in cloudy skies, but they’re lightning nevertheless. This now makes Mars the third extraterrestrial world known to host lightning, joining Jupiter and Saturn.

Sparks in the Dust

The Perseverance rover’s SuperCam microphone, perched atop its mast, recorded 28 hours of Martian sound over two years. Hidden in the data were 55 short bursts that bore all the hallmarks of tiny electrical discharges.

The discharges weren’t bright, branching bolts like those on Earth. They were weak, millimeter-long sparks, “similar to those that cause a static shock when a person touches something conductive,” wrote Daniel Mitchard, a lightning physicist at Cardiff University, in a Nature News and Views commentary.

Each discharge lasted mere milliseconds. Yet seven of them coincided with electromagnetic interference, which is a telltale sign that something electrically charged had just zapped through the air near the rover. In one case, the spark’s energy reached about 40 millijoules, possibly caused by the rover itself discharging to the ground after accumulating dust.

Most events, though, were weaker; the kind of static flickers you’d get from rubbing a balloon. “These serendipitous observations demonstrate that Martian electric fields can reach the breakdown threshold of the near-surface atmosphere of Mars,” the authors wrote. That’s roughly 15 kilovolts per meter — strong enough to make the thin Martian air crackle.

How Martian Lightning Forms

On Earth, lightning typically erupts inside storm clouds where ice particles collide and swap charges. Mars is too cold and dry for rainstorms, but it produces its own electrical discharges through triboelectrification — the charge build-up caused by friction between dust grains. As fierce winds whip through the Martian surface, tiny mineral particles strike one another, transferring electrons and creating pockets of electric potential.

When that charge builds up enough, it discharges. The resulting spark releases both sound and electromagnetic waves, the very signals Perseverance detected.

The study found that nearly all electrical events occurred during high winds, dust devils, or the leading edges of dust storms. “Wind is an important factor to initiate charging,” the authors wrote, noting that 54 of the 55 discharges happened during the gustiest conditions.

One particularly strong dust devil, recorded on Sol 1,296, caused the largest pressure drop seen by Perseverance to date — 5.5 pascals — and unleashed ten separate discharges as it swept directly over the rover.

Though modest, Mars’s electric discharges could impact the planet’s chemistry and climate. The study suggests that electrical discharges help drive oxidizing reactions in the Martian atmosphere, producing compounds like hydrogen peroxide and perchlorates that can degrade organic material.

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“Lightning can create unusual chemicals, such as chlorine, which can react strongly with the surface soil on Mars,” Francis Nimmo, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the study, told Scientific American. Such reactions might explain the planet’s mysterious chlorine cycle or why organic molecules are so hard to preserve there.

Electrical activity could also influence how dust behaves. Adding electric forces to wind-blown grains lowers the wind speed required to lift them, creating a feedback loop that fuels even more dust lifting and storm formation.

For future explorers, this study matters. Though “of course, it won’t kill you,” as Dr. Chide joked to The New York Times, these small shocks could disrupt electronics or damage sensitive equipment. Understanding how and when they occur will help engineers design more resilient gear for astronauts.

Yet despite these exciting findings, no camera has yet captured a visual flash. The team plans to design dedicated instruments to measure Martian electrical fields directly. Meanwhile, Perseverance will keep listening.

The findings were reported in the journal Nature.