NASA's Perseverance rover has detected 'mini-lightning' on Mars for the first time, capturing faint crackles from dust-driven electrical discharges du

A chance discovery by a NASA rover on Mars shows that the red planet has a form of lightning, which researchers had suspected for decades but never seen.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover recently came across an odd rock, dubbed "Phippsaksla," that is unlike anything else the robot has found on the Red Planet. It turns out that it probably isn't from our neighboring world and likely crashed on Mars instead.

Skylights, openings in the surface of Mars that descend down into caves, have been found on Mars, along with signatures for the presence of water ice.

Mars, long considered largely static, has revealed a dynamic interior in recent years. NASA’s InSight mission detected ongoing tectonic activity, localised mantle plumes, and magmatic processes, suggesting Mars’ interior remains active and may have contributed to the planet’s atmosphere through mantle outgassing.

On November 26, 2011, the NASA Curiosity rover launched to Mars. Curiosity was the biggest and most powerful rover anyone had ever sent to the Red Planet. The two-ton science laboratory is about the size of a small SUV.

In recent decades, the red planet has gone from being a distant object of study to becoming the main target of human expansion beyond Earth—and the moon, of