NASA’s MAVEN Illuminates New Understanding of Auroras at Mars

NASA's MAVEN spacecraft has provided crucial insights into how auroras light up Mars. Research published on Thursday by NASA News shows that Martian auroras form through a process remarkably similar to Earth's auroras—though on a far smaller scale. On Earth, solar energy flows through something called the Dungey cycle, a mechanism that builds up electrical currents and accelerates charged particles into our atmosphere to create the auroras we see at the poles. Mars experiences a miniature version of this same process, but over the planet's scattered crustal magnetic fields. Unlike Earth, which has a global magnetic field generated by its churning core, Mars has lost its ancient magnetic field and instead hosts hundreds of tiny magnetized regions frozen into its crust. Scientists spotted auroras glowing above these crustal pockets and now understand how they form—a finding that deepens our grasp of Mars' evolution and will inform future robotic and human exploration of the Red Planet.

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