NASA Researchers Use MAVEN Data to Solve Martian Aurora Mystery

A lost NASA spacecraft has handed scientists the key to solving a long-standing planetary mystery. By analyzing archived data from the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission, researchers have discovered how localized auroras form on a world that lacks a global magnetic field.

While Earth relies on a planet-wide magnetosphere to channel charged solar particles into glowing polar displays, Mars tells a different story. The Red Planet lacks a global magnetic field. Yet, isolated pockets of magnetized crust—roughly four billion years old—survive across its surface. Researchers found that directly above these ancient patches, a localized, miniature version of the Dandy cycle occurs.

Decoding Ancient Crustal Anomalies in Nature Communications

Published in the journal «Nature Communications», the findings demonstrate that magnetic reconnection happens above these regional crustal remnants much like it does on Earth. When the sun’s magnetic field interacts with these localized magnetic fields, energy redistributes and accelerates charged particles downward into the atmosphere.

Leadership behind the spacecraft’s observations emphasized the significance of the findings. «Šis atklājums maina mūsu priekšstatu par polārajām gaismām Marsā un palīdz labāk izprast Sarkanās planētes evolūciju,» paziņoja misijas «MAVEN» vadītāja Šenona Kerija.

The study utilized multiple scientific instruments aboard the spacecraft to measure magnetic fields, plasma flows, and charged particle movement.

The Final Transmission and Closure of the MAVEN Program

Saziņa ar aparātu «MAVEN» tika zaudēta 2025. gada 6. decembrī, bet 2026. gada 3. jūnijā NASA oficiāli atzina aparātu par neatgūstamu un noslēdza misiju.

Despite the end of active operations, researchers continue extracting groundbreaking insights from its years of accumulated measurements. Understanding how the solar wind interacts with Mars’s atmosphere, according to scientists, will be especially important when preparing future robotic and crewed expeditions to the Red Planet.

Psyche Executes a Sweeping Planetary Flyby

While archived data sheds light on ancient magnetic anomalies, active missions are simultaneously using the planet as a grand-scale rehearsal. NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is on its way to a metal-rich asteroid beyond Mars—and it’s enjoying the scenic route.

The planetary encounter yielded a sweeping time-lapse sequence. The sequence opens with the faint crescent of Mars growing steadily larger before gliding over the planet’s sweeping ocher vistas, pockmarked with impact craters and gleaming polar ice caps shining in the sun’s light, before the craft slipped into interplanetary space.

Testing Instruments and Tracking Martian Moons

Launched in 2023, the Psyche mission is headed for an asteroid that scientists suspect may be the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet, stripped bare by violent collisions during the solar system’s youth. Mission scientists used the planetary flyby to put the spacecraft’s multispectral imager through a full dress rehearsal.

«The imager performed brilliantly,» said Jim Bell, the Psyche imager instrument lead at Arizona State University, in a statement.

Bell added that the maneuver allowed researchers to test calibration and sensitivity to scattered light. The team successfully picked out the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos from very far away as a part of a practice for the satellite search that will be used at the asteroid Psyche to look for any moonlets there.

Already three years into its journey, the Psyche spacecraft still has three more to go until it reaches its destination. If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will arrive at the asteroid in 2029.