Forget rain-soaked tempests; the weather on Mars is a spectacle of a different kind. In a landmark discovery, scientists have confirmed the existence of lightning and thunder on the Red Planet, captured for the first time in audio by NASA's Perseverance rover in November 2025.
How Martian Dust Storms Spark Lightning
Unlike Earth, where lightning is born in towering water clouds, Mars is far too dry for such formations. Instead, the planet's dramatic weather is driven by immense dust storms. These storms can grow several times taller than Earth's largest thunderstorms, whipping up vast clouds of fine dust and sand.
The mechanism for creating lightning is a process known as triboelectrification. As countless tiny dust particles and heavier sand grains collide violently within these storms, they become electrically charged. The smaller dust particles gain a positive charge, while the larger sand grains become negative. Lighter, positively charged dust rises high into the storm, while the heavier, negatively charged sand stays closer to the Martian surface.
This separation of opposite charges builds up immense electrical energy. Eventually, this energy is released in a sudden discharge – a lightning strike. The rapid heating and expansion of the air around this electrical bolt creates the shockwaves we perceive as thunder.
The Hunt for Extraterrestrial Electricity
The scientific quest to prove Martian lightning began over a decade ago. Professor Nilton O. Rennó and his team at the University of Michigan first found evidence of lightning strikes on Mars more than ten years ago by detecting characteristic radio wave bursts using NASA's deep-space communication dishes.
They meticulously listened for signals for weeks, eventually pinpointing radio bursts that coincided with a massive, 25-mile (40-kilometre) tall dust storm observed from orbit. This confirmed the source of the electrical activity.
The breakthrough in late 2025 came when the Perseverance rover, which landed in Jezero crater in 2021, used its onboard microphone to record the crackling sounds of these electrical discharges. The audio, captured as small dust devils passed by, resembles the sound of electric sparks on Earth.
Why Martian Lightning Matters for the Search for Life
Studying this alien weather phenomenon is about more than meteorological curiosity; it has profound implications for understanding whether Mars could have once supported life. On early Earth, lightning is thought to have played a crucial role in sparking the chemical reactions that led to life.
Lightning can convert atmospheric nitrogen and carbon dioxide molecules into amino acids, the fundamental building blocks of proteins and, ultimately, living organisms. The presence of lightning in Mars's past could therefore indicate that the planet had the necessary conditions for prebiotic chemistry.
Furthermore, the lightning observed is not the brilliant forked variety seen on Earth. Due to Mars's thin atmosphere, which is about 100 times less dense than our own and similar to the gas inside a neon tube, scientists suspect Martian lightning would glow with a faint, diffuse light rather than a sharp bolt.
As research continues, each new datum from rovers like Perseverance helps piece together the geological and climatic history of our planetary neighbour, bringing us closer to answering the enduring question: was Mars ever alive?
