Scientists have just spotted a new gigantic aurora on Mars unlike any ever seen before.
The aurora, a vibrant light in the atmosphere, has been described as a huge wormlike shape which stretches thousands of miles across the planet.
It has been named "sinuous discrete aurora" to describe its huge twisting form across the dark skies of Mars.
The incredible phenomenon was caught on camera by a United Arab Emirates Space Agency probe, known as Hope, took the picture on an ultraviolet spectrometer device.
The new discovery has led to more questions being raised by scientists about Mars and its atmosphere.
Rob Lillis, a planetary physicist and collaborator with Emirates Mars Mission claimed that scientists have been blown away by what they found in Hope's snapshots.
And he claims the team have seen several more wormlike light shows on Mars since November.
Describing the fascination with auroras, Lillis said: "Auroras were mysterious for the longest time on Earth before we understood that they're actually space weather and high-energy streams of electrons, coming originally from the sun, and basically guided by a planetary magnetic field.
"Whether it's Earth or Mars, those electrons smash into the atmosphere, and they cause the atmosphere to glow."
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NASA’s next priorities should include the exploration of Saturn's ice moon Enceladus and the mysterious planet Uranus, a major scientific report has said.
Every 10 years, the US National Academies of Sciences prepares a report identifying the next set of space exploration goals for NASA and the US National Science Foundation.
For the 2022 report, the experts agreed that the number one priority should be collecting soil samples from the planet Mars and bringing them to Earth.
That project – NASA’s Mars Sample Return initiative – began with the Mars Perseverance rover, which is already on the first leg of this ambitious scheme.
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