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Multi-colored “Sound and Light” Show Over Ohio
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By USH
On the night of Friday, May 16, something extraordinary lit up the skies over the American Southwest. A brilliant, fast-moving streak of light that captivated onlookers from Arizona to Colorado.
Witnesses in towns such as Safford, Fountain Hills, and Payson, as well as regions of New Mexico and Colorado, were left asking the same question: What exactly did we just see?
Speculation spread rapidly. Some suggested a Chinese rocket launch earlier that day could be responsible, possibly placing satellites into orbit. Others floated more exotic theories: perhaps STEVE, a rare atmospheric light phenomenon similar to the aurora borealis, or even a “light pillar,” formed when light reflects off high-altitude ice crystals.
Attempts to reach officials at Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in southern Arizona, and Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque have so far yielded no response.
What if it wasn’t a rocket plume from a Chinese launch at all? What if something entirely different passed near our planet, like a comet or UFO, or perhaps it was a test of a space-based weapon or a directed-energy system?
Whatever it may have been, it remains a strange phenomenon, leaving many to wonder what truly streaked across the sky.
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By NASA
Astronaut Anne McClain is pictured on May 1, 2025, near one of the International Space Station’s main solar arrays.Credit: NASA NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi will answer prerecorded questions submitted by middle and high school students from New York and Ohio. Both groups will hear from the astronauts aboard the International Space Station in two separate events.
The first event at 10:20 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, May 20, includes students from Long Beach Middle School in Lido Beach, New York. Media interested in covering the event at Long Beach Middle School must RSVP no later than 5 p.m. Monday, May 19, to Christi Tursi at: ctursi@lbeach.org or 516-771-3960.
The second event at 11 a.m. EDT on Friday, May 23, is with students from Vermilion High School in Vermilion, Ohio. Media interested in covering the event at Vermilion High School must RSVP no later than 5 p.m. Thursday, May 22, to Jennifer Bengele at: jbengele@vermilionschools.org or 440-479-7783.
Watch both 20-minute Earth-to-space calls live on NASA STEM YouTube Channel.
Long Beach Middle School will host the event for students in grades 6 through 8. The school aims to provide both the students and community with an experience that bridge gaps in space sciences with teaching and learning in classrooms.
Vermilion High School will host the event for students in grades 9 through 12, to help increase student interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics career pathways.
For more than 24 years, astronauts have continuously lived and worked aboard the space station, testing technologies, performing science, and developing skills needed to explore farther from Earth. Astronauts aboard the orbiting laboratory communicate with NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston 24 hours a day through SCaN’s (Space Communications and Navigation) Near Space Network.
Research and technology investigations taking place aboard the space station benefit people on Earth and lay the groundwork for other agency missions. As part of NASA’s Artemis campaign, the agency will send astronauts to the Moon to prepare for future human exploration of Mars, inspiring Artemis Generation explorers and ensuring the United States continues to lead in space exploration and discovery.
See videos of astronauts aboard the space station at:
https://www.nasa.gov/stemonstation
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Gerelle Dodson
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
gerelle.q.dodson@nasa.gov
Sandra Jones
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov
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Last Updated May 16, 2025 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Humans in Space In-flight Education Downlinks International Space Station (ISS) Johnson Space Center Learning Resources NASA Headquarters View the full article
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By NASA
6 min read
NASA Observes First Visible-light Auroras at Mars
On March 15, 2024, near the peak of the current solar cycle, the Sun produced a solar flare and an accompanying coronal mass ejection (CME), a massive explosion of gas and magnetic energy that carries with it large amounts of solar energetic particles. This solar activity led to stunning auroras across the solar system, including at Mars, where NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover made history by detecting them for the first time from the surface of another planet.
The first visible-light image of green aurora on Mars (left), taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument on NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. On the right is a comparison image of the night sky of Mars without aurora but featuring the Martian moon Deimos. The moonlit Martian night sky, lit up mostly by Mars’ nearer and larger moon Phobos (outside the frame) has a reddish-brown hue due to the dust in the atmosphere, so when green auroral light is added, the sky takes on a green-yellow tone, as seen in the left image. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/SSI “This exciting discovery opens up new possibilities for auroral research and confirms that auroras could be visible to future astronauts on Mars’ surface.” said Elise Knutsen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oslo in Norway and lead author of the Science Advances study, which reported the detection.
Picking the right aurora
On Earth, auroras form when solar particles interact with the global magnetic field, funneling them to the poles where they collide with atmospheric gases and emit light. The most common color, green, is caused by excited oxygen atoms emitting light at a wavelength of 557.7 nanometers. For years, scientists have theorized that green light auroras could also exist on Mars but suggested they would be much fainter and harder to capture than the green auroras we see on Earth.
Due to the Red Planet’s lack of a global magnetic field, Mars has different types of auroras than those we have on Earth. One of these is solar energetic particle (SEP) auroras, which NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) mission discovered in 2014. These occur when super-energetic particles from the Sun hit the Martian atmosphere, causing a reaction that makes the atmosphere glow across the whole night sky.
While MAVEN had observed SEP auroras in ultraviolet light from orbit, this phenomenon had never been observed in visible light from the ground. Since SEPs typically occur during solar storms, which increase during solar maximum, Knutsen and her team set their sights on capturing visible images and spectra of SEP aurora from Mars’ surface at the peak of the Sun’s current solar cycle.
Coordinating the picture-perfect moment
Through modeling, Knutsen and her team determined the optimal angle for the Perseverance rover’s SuperCam spectrometer and Mastcam-Z camera to successfully observe the SEP aurora in visible light. With this observation strategy in place, it all came down to the timing and understanding of CMEs.
“The trick was to pick a good CME, one that would accelerate and inject many charged particles into Mars’ atmosphere,” said Knutsen.
That is where the teams at NASA’s Moon to Mars (M2M) Space Weather Analysis Office and the Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC), both located at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, came in. The M2M team provides real-time analysis of solar eruptions to the CCMC for initiating simulations of CMEs to determine if they might impact current NASA missions. When the simulations suggest potential impacts, the team sends out an alert.
At the University of California, Berkeley, space physicist Christina Lee received an alert from the M2M office about the March 15, 2024, CME. Lee, a member of the MAVEN mission team who serves as the space weather lead, determined there was a notable solar storm heading toward the Red Planet,which could arrive in a few days. She immediately issued the Mars Space Weather Alert Notification to currently operating Mars missions.
“This allows the science teams of Perseverance and MAVEN to anticipate impacts of interplanetary CMEs and the associated SEPs,” said Lee.
“When we saw the strength of this one,” Knutsen said, “we estimated it could trigger aurora bright enough for our instruments to detect.”
A few days later, the CME impacted Mars, providing a lightshow for the rover to capture, showing the aurora to be nearly uniform across the sky at an emission wavelength of exactly 557.7 nm. To confirm the presence of SEPs during the aurora observation, the team looked to MAVEN’s SEP instrument, which was additionally corroborated by data from ESA’s (European Space Agency) Mars Express mission. Data from both missions confirmed that the rover team had managed to successfully catch a glimpse of the phenomenon in the very narrow time window available.
“This was a fantastic example of cross-mission coordination. We all worked together quickly to facilitate this observation and are thrilled to have finally gotten a sneak peek of what astronauts will be able to see there some day,” said Shannon Curry, MAVEN principal investigator and research scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder).
The future of aurora on Mars
By coordinating the Perseverance observations with measurements from MAVEN’s SEP instrument, the teams could help each other determine that the observed 557.7 nm emission came from solar energetic particles. Since this is the same emission line as the green aurora on Earth, it is likely that future Martian astronauts would be able to see this type of aurora.
“Perseverance’s observations of the visible-light aurora confirm a new way to study these phenomena that’s complementary to what we can observe with our Mars orbiters,” said Katie Stack Morgan, acting project scientist for Perseverance at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “A better understanding of auroras and the conditions around Mars that lead to their formation are especially important as we prepare to send human explorers there safely.”
On September 21, 2014, NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft entered orbit around Mars. The mission has produced a wealth of data about how Mars’ atmosphere responds to the Sun and solar wind NASA/JPL-Caltech More About Perseverance and MAVEN
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio and NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
The MAVEN mission, also part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio, is led by LASP at CU Boulder. It’s managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and was built and operated by Lockheed Martin Space, with navigation and network support from NASA’s JPL.
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By Willow Reed
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), University of Colorado Boulder
Media Contact:
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Nancy N. Jones
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated May 14, 2025 Related Terms
Mars Goddard Space Flight Center MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) View the full article
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By NASA
NASA Glenn Research Center’s Associate Director Larry Sivic, front row, third from left, joins in a group photo with Slovenian government officials and representatives from the Ohio Governor’s Office during a visit to the center on Friday, April 11, 2025. Credit: NASA/Jef Janis NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland hosted a delegation of Slovenian government officials and representatives from the Ohio Governor’s Office on April 11. NASA Glenn leadership provided the group with an overview of the center’s vital role within the agency. The delegation also visited key space-related and aeronautics facilities, including tours of the Zero Gravity Research Facility, Simulated Lunar Operations Laboratory, and Icing Research Tunnel.
Republic of Slovenia Minister of Defense Borut Sajovic and Ambassador of the Republic of Slovenia to the United States Iztok Mirosic headed the delegation. Joe Zeis, who is the senior advisor for Aerospace and Defense for the Office of the Governor, and Tobias Engel, who is with the Ohio Department of Development International Affairs, also attended.
Facility Manager Dennis Eck, second from left, points out features of NASA Glenn Research Center’s Icing Research Tunnel to a delegation of Slovenian government officials and representatives from the Ohio Governor’s Office during a tour to the center on Friday, April 11, 2025. Credit: NASA/Jef Janis The Slovenia Space Office — under the Ministry of the Economy, Industry, and Sport — coordinates Slovenia’s space activities within ESA (European Space Agency). Slovenia recently became a member state of ESA, enabling more international opportunities for Slovenian scientists and engineers. Last year, Slovenia joined the Artemis Accords, which provides a common set of principles to enhance the governance of the civil exploration and use of outer space, as the 39th participant.
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By European Space Agency
As the night closed in on Spain and Portugal on 28 April, polar satellites followed the blackout that lasted well into the early hours of the morning in several regions.
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