The first astronauts to set foot on Mars may be in for a spectacular sight — the entire night sky filled with glowing auroras. Researchers working on NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission hosted a news conference this afternoon (Nov. 5) to discuss the orbiter's observations about the Red Planet's loss of atmosphere due to solar wind, and they also shared some details about MAVEN's measurements of Mars auroras. "A new kind of aurora was observed at Mars that frankly surprised us, and this was aurorae in a part of the atmosphere that is above regions that don't have a magnetic field at all," Dave Brain, MAVEN co-investigator and researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), said during the news conference.
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