NASA's Perseverance rover has captured an aurora in the night sky for the first time from the Martian ground. Scientists have known for two decades that Mars' skies have auroras, too, but these curtains of undulating light had only been detected in ultraviolet — light that is invisible to the naked eye — until now.

NASA’s Perseverance rover has detected the first aurora at Mars that’s visible to the human eye, good news for future astronauts who can savor the view on the red planet.

On March 15, 2024, near the peak of the current solar cycle, the sun produced a solar flare and an accompanying coronal mass ejection (CME), a massive explosion of gas and magnetic energy that carries with it large amounts of solar energetic particles.