The sunspot is still quite a hotspot even though it has spun out of our field of vision. On Tuesday, May 14, it released its greatest solar flare to yet. Coronal mass ejections, or bursts of solar plasma and magnetic field, that were previously originating from AR3664 will now be diverted away from Earth. However, scientists believe that Mars may also be affected by impacts from this big sunspot.

“Looking at the measurements of the flare from Mars using the Extreme Ultraviolet Monitor (EUVM) onboard MAVEN, this is by-far the largest flare we’ve seen since MAVEN arrived at Mars in 2014,” said Dr. Ed Thiemann, a heliophysicist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

“We haven’t looked at MAVEN’s atmospheric measurements yet, but based on prior events, we expect the flare rapidly heated and ionized the Martian upper atmosphere, causing the upper atmospheric temperature to perhaps double for a few hours and inflating the entire daylit hemisphere by tens of km.”

Actually, with both AR3663 and AR3664 in clear view, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has a front-row seat on the Red Planet with a straight view of the sun. Similar to Earth, Mars is directly in the path of the CME, therefore once it gets there, there will be effects because the Martian atmosphere will interact with the solar storm that is created. And sure, Perseverance could get to witness an aurora on a global scale as a result.

“The CME launched by the flare is on its way and it may cause global-scale aurora and energize Mars’s upper ionosphere and magnetosphere,” added Thiemann.

But Mars lacks a magnetic field to protect it from the supercharged particles, unlike Earth’s atmosphere. This is the reason it’s critical that MAVEN continue to monitor and investigate Mars’ upper atmosphere in the wake of an event like this.

MAVEN would be treated to a breathtaking light show on other occasions. On both the day and night sides of the Red Planet, auroras were observed in August 2022 as a result of a solar storm.

Furthermore, the International Space Station (ISS) provided our own NASA astronauts with a spectacular display of illumination earlier this year in February. After all is said and done, scientists hope to obtain information about whether the CME affects Mars and what other effects it may have.

“Both the flare and the CME are expected to temporarily increase the loss of Mars’ atmosphere to space, and we’re keenly interested in using MAVEN to measure these really big events because it gives us a window into how the earlier and more active Sun eroded away Mars’s once-thick atmosphere creating the cold and arid planet we see today,” Thiemann stated.