Scientists capture sounds of ‘lightning’ on MarsMarcia DunnAPThu, 27 November 2025 6:26AM
Scientists have detected what they believe to be lightning on Mars by eavesdropping on the whirling wind recorded by NASA’s Perseverance rover.
The crackling of electrical discharges was captured by a microphone on the rover, a French-led team reported Wednesday.
The researchers documented 55 instances of what they call “mini lightning” over two Martian years, primarily during dust storms and dust devils. Almost all occurred on the windiest Martian sols, or days, during dust storms and dust devils.
Just centimetres in size, the electrical arcs occurred within two metres of the microphone perched atop the rover’s tall mast, part of a system for examining Martian rocks via camera and lasers. Sparks from the electrical discharges — akin to static electricity on Earth — are clearly audible amid the noisy wind gusts and dust particles smacking the microphone.
The evidence is strong and persuasive, but it’s based on a single instrument that was meant to record the rover zapping rocks with lasers, not lightning blasts, said Cardiff University’s Daniel Mitchard, who was not involved in the study. What’s more, he noted in an article accompanying the study in the journal Nature, the electrical discharges were heard — not seen.
“It really is a chance discovery to hear something else going on nearby, and everything points to this being Martian lightning,” Mitchard said, but until new instruments are sent to verify the findings, “I think there will still be a debate from some scientists as to whether this really was lightning.”
Lightning has already been confirmed on Jupiter and Saturn, and Mars has long been suspected of having it.
To find it, 28 hours of Perseverance recordings were analysed, documenting episodes of “mini lightning” based on acoustic and electric signals.
Electrical discharges generated by the fast-moving dust devils lasted just a few seconds, while those spawned by dust storms lingered as long as 30 minutes.
Mars’ atmosphere is more prone than Earth’s to electrical discharging and sparking through contact among grains of dust and sand, according to Chide.
“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,” Mitchard wrote in Nature. But the “small and frequent static-like discharges could prove problematic for sensitive equipment”.
These aren’t the first Mars sounds transmitted by Perseverance. Earthlings have listened in to the rover’s wheels crunching over the Martian surface and the whirring blades of its no-longer-flying helicopter sidekick, Ingenuity.
Perseverance has been scouring a dry river delta at Mars since 2021, collecting samples of rock for possible signs of ancient microscopic life. NASA plans to return these core samples to Earth for laboratory analysis, but the delivery is on indefinite hold as the space agency pursues cheaper options.
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