For the first time, NASA’s MAVEN Mars orbiter sees Martian light show caused by major solar storm

NASA's MAVEN orbiter which has been orbiting Mars for more than eight years observed two different types of ultraviolet aurorae (a natural light display) simultaneously. This light show was caused by solar storms that began on August 27.

MAVEN, short for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, launched in November 2013 on a mission to explore the Red Planet's upper atmosphere, ionosphere and interactions with the sun and solar wind.

Accurate space weather forecasting is critical to help protect current missions and future human explorers at the Red Planet because unlike Earth, Mars lacks a global magnetic field to shield against the damaging radiation solar storms can bring, NASA said in a statement.

Our MAVEN orbiter has observed a Martian light show caused by a major solar storm – and there could be more to come. The findings inform space weather forecasting, which is critical to protect current and future missions at the Red Planet. More: https://t.co/VLHafc5EZH pic.twitter.com/c6hktYEeK3

— NASA Mars (@NASAMars) November 9, 2022

According to the agency, an active region on the Sun produced a series of solar flares on August 27. This was followed by a coronal mass ejection (CME), which impacted Mars a few days later.

This CME, as NASA said, produced one of the brightest solar energetic particle (SEP) events that the MAVEN Mars orbiter has ever observed. The SEPs that were accelerated ahead of the CME were observed at Mars by the orbiter's SEP detector on August 27.

Further, many of the instruments onboard the spacecraft collectively measured the strength of the solar storm, including the Extreme Ultraviolet Monitor, the Magnetometer, the Solar Wind Ion Analyzer, and the Solar Wind Electron Analyzer.

"It's exciting to still be observing "firsts" like these simultaneous aurora so many years into the mission. We have so much to learn about the atmosphere and how solar storms affect the Red Planet," said Shannon Curry, MAVEN's principal investigator at the University of California, Berkeley.