Overview

• NASA’s Perseverance rover recorded a green aurora over Mars’s Jezero Crater in March 2024, visible at a 557.7 nm wavelength.
• This marks the first aurora visible to the human eye ever detected on Mars and the first recorded from a planetary surface beyond Earth.
• The aurora, caused by a solar flare and coronal mass ejection, highlights the interaction between solar particles and Mars’s thin atmosphere and localized magnetic fields.
• Unlike Earth’s structured auroras, the Martian aurora appeared as a uniform green glow across the entire sky.
• The findings, now published, pave the way for aurora forecasting on Mars and new methods to study solar wind interactions with the planet’s atmosphere.