Scientists Say These Small Electrical Discharges May Be the First Direct Evidence of Lightning on Mars

Rather than big bolts of lightning as seen on Earth, NASA’s Perseverance rover recorded audio of small zaps similar to those from static electricity

Sarah Kuta - Daily Correspondent

December 1, 2025 4:08 p.m.

Mars regularly experiences dust storms, like this one captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2012. Scientists say they found evidence of "mini lightning" during some of these storms. NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona

For decades, researchers have suspected that lightning lights up the sky on Mars. Now, they may have captured at least the audio evidence to prove it.

NASA’s Perseverance rover recorded dozens of instances of electricity crackling in the Red Planet’s atmosphere, researchers report in a new paper published November 26 in the journal Nature.

Mars does not have large, jagged bolts of lightning like those common during thunderstorms on Earth. Rather, the Red Planet has what researchers call “mini lightning.” These are tiny electrical discharges similar to the brief zap you might feel after rubbing your feet along carpet and then touching a metal doorknob.

The lightning on Mars is what’s known as triboelectricity. This phenomenon occurs when airborne particles—such as those whirling around during Martian dust storms—rub against each other, which causes their atoms to become positively or negatively charged. These charged atoms accumulate and separate, causing an electrical field to form between them.

When the imbalance becomes too great, the negatively charged components of atoms leap across the field, producing small electrical arcs—a tiny spark or, in some cases, a massive bolt of lightning. The same spectacle occurs on Earth within sandstorms and ash plumes of volcanic eruptions.

Quick fact: Lightning elsewhere in the solar system

Besides Earth, lightning also has been confirmed on Jupiter and Saturn.

“We did not detect lightning by the common definition,” study co-author Ralph Lorenz, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, tells Reuters’ Will Dunham. “It was a small spark, perhaps a few millimeters long, not really lightning. It sounded like a spark or whip-crack.”

If astronauts eventually set foot on the Red Planet, these electrical discharges likely won’t kill them. But the phenomena might mess with their electronic devices, meaning the finding could influence the development of Mars-bound spacecraft and gadgets.

“The current evidence suggests it is extremely unlikely that the first person to walk on Mars could, as they plant a flag on the surface, be struck down by a bolt of lightning,” writes Daniel Mitchard, a particle physicist at Cardiff University in Wales who was not involved with the research, in an accompanying commentary on the paper. However, he adds, the “existence of small and frequent static-like discharges could prove problematic for sensitive equipment.”

An illustration of NASA's Perseverance rover operating on Mars NASA / JPL-Caltech

Three years ago, scientists were analyzing an audio recording of a dust devil passing over the Perseverance rover when they heard a mysterious, loud clicking sound. Initially, they assumed it was “a big sand grain or a small gravel grain … hitting the structure,” Lorenz tells NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce.

But, later, they realized the sound might be the zap of an electrical discharge. Simulations of electrical interference conducted on Earth seemed to confirm this hunch, so they went back through 28 hours of recordings gathered over two Martian years.

The team found 55 electrical discharges that had occurred within roughly six feet of the rover’s microphone, with the largest producing around 40 millijoules of energy—similar to the shock of an electric bug swatter. Most of the zaps came during periods of intense wind, including instances when dust devils passed over the rover.

Many experts say that the sounds picked up by the rover were probably electrical discharges—and that the evidence points to the existence of Martian lightning. Giles Harrison, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Reading in England who was not involved with the research, tells the New York Times’ Kenneth Chang he finds the results to be “quite compelling.”

“It’s pretty interesting, pretty significant and, I think, the most direct observational evidence we’ve got of electrical activity in Mars’ atmosphere that we yet have,” he adds.

However, until additional instruments can be sent to Mars to confirm the findings, scientists will probably continue to debate the issue, Mitchard tells Marcia Dunn at the Associated Press. He notes that Perseverance’s audio recording instrument was not built to detect electrical zaps, and that the supposed lightning was not actually seen.

Still, Baptiste Chide, a study co-author and planetary scientist at the University of Toulouse in France, welcomes additional research on Martian lightning. He tells Science News’ Nikk Ogasa that the discovery calls for a “next generation of instruments dedicated to measuring electric fields at the surface of Mars … to better quantify this phenomenon.”

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