SPACE/COSMOS

ESA’s Mars Orbiters Watch Solar Superstorm Hit The Red Planet

To study Mars’s atmosphere, ESA’s two Mars orbiters make use of a technique called ‘radio occultation’. CREDIT: European Space Agency

 March 6, 2026  

By Eurasia Review

What happens when a solar superstorm hits Mars? Thanks to the European Space Agency’s Mars orbiters, we now know: glitching spacecraft and a supercharged upper atmosphere.

In May 2024, Earth was hit by the biggest solar storm recorded in over 20 years. It sent our planet’s atmosphere into overdrive, triggering shimmering auroras that were seen as far south as Mexico.

This storm also hit Mars. Fortunately, ESA’s two Mars Orbiters – Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) – were in the right place at the right time, with a radiation monitor aboard TGO picking up a dose equivalent to 200 ‘normal’ days in just 64 hours.

A new study to be published in Nature Communications on Thursday 5 March reveals in greater depth how this intense, stormy activity affected the Red Planet.

“The impact was remarkable: Mars’s upper atmosphere was flooded by electrons,” says ESA Research Fellow Jacob Parrott, lead author of the study. “It was the biggest response to a solar storm we’ve ever seen at Mars.”

The superstorm caused a dramatic increase in electrons in two distinct layers of Mars’s atmosphere at altitudes of around 110 and 130 km, with numbers rising by 45% and a whopping 278%, respectively. This is the most electrons we’ve ever seen in this layer of martian atmosphere.

“The storm also caused computer errors for both orbiters – a typical peril of space weather, as the particles involved are so energetic and hard to predict,” adds Jacob. “Luckily, the spacecraft were designed with this in mind, and built with radiation-resistant components and specific systems for detecting and fixing these errors. They recovered fast.”

Pioneering a new technique

To investigate the superstorm’s impact on Mars, Jacob and colleagues used a technique currently being pioneered by ESA known as radio occultation.

First, Mars Express beamed a radio signal to TGO at the very moment it was disappearing over the martian horizon. As TGO vanished, the radio signal was bent (‘refracted’) by the various layers of Mars’s atmosphere before being picked up by the orbiter, allowing scientists to glean more about each layer. The researchers also used observations from NASA’s MAVEN mission to confirm the electron densities.

“This technique has actually been used for decades to explore the Solar System, but using signals beamed from a spacecraft to Earth,” says Colin Wilson, ESA project scientist for Mars Express and TGO, and co-author of the study. “It’s only in the past five years or so that we’ve started using it at Mars between two spacecraft, such as Mars Express and TGO, which usually use those radios to beam data between orbiters and rovers. It’s great to see it in action.”

ESA uses orbiter-to-orbiter radio occultation routinely at Earth, and plans to use it more regularly in future planetary missions.

Different worlds, different weather

The superstorm was experienced very differently at Earth and Mars, highlighting the differences between the two worlds.

At Earth, the response of the upper atmosphere was more muted, thanks to the shielding effect of Earth’s magnetic field. As well as deflecting a lot of solar storm particles away from Earth, the magnetic field also diverted some towards Earth’s poles, where they caused the sky to light up with auroras.

While their differences can make it tricky to compare planets directly, understanding how solar activity impacts the residents of the Solar System – in other words, space weather forecasting – is hugely important. At Earth, solar storms can be dangerous and damaging for astronauts and equipment up in space, and can disrupt our satellites and systems (power, radio, navigation) further down.

However, studying space weather is difficult as the Sun throws out radiation and material erratically, making targeted measurements largely opportunistic. “Fortunately, we were able to use this new technique with Mars Express and TGO just 10 minutes after a large solar flare hit Mars. Currently we’re only performing two observations per week at Mars, so the timing was extremely lucky,” adds Jacob.

Jacob and colleagues captured the aftermath of three solar events – all part of the same storm, but different in terms of what they throw out into space, and how they do it: one flare of radiation, one burst of high-energy particles, and an eruption of material known as a coronal mass ejection (CME).

Together, these events sent fast-moving, energetic, magnetised plasma and X-rays flooding towards Mars. When this barrage of material hit the planet’s upper atmosphere it collided with neutral atoms and stripped away their electrons, causing the region to fill up with electrons and charged particles.

“The results improve our understanding of Mars by revealing how solar storms deposit energy and particles into Mars’s atmosphere – important as we know the planet has lost both huge amounts of water and most of its atmosphere to space, most likely driven by the continual wind of particles streaming out from the Sun,” says Colin.

“But there’s another side to it: the structure and contents of a planet’s atmosphere influence how radio signals travel through space. If Mars’s upper atmosphere is packed full of electrons, this could block the signals we use to explore the planet’s surface via radar, making it a key consideration in our mission planning – and impacting our ability to investigate other worlds.”

Scientists Successfully Harvest Chickpeas From ‘Moon Dirt’

The researchers chose the ‘Myles’ variety of chickpea for this study. Its compact size and resiliency support crop production in space-limited mission environments. 

CREDIT: University of Texas Institute for Geophysics


March 6, 2026 
By Eurasia Review


As the U.S. plans to return to the moon with the upcoming Artemis II mission, a question endures: What will future lunar explorers eat? According to new research from The University of Texas at Austin the answer might be chickpeas.

Scientists have successfully grown and harvested chickpeas using simulated “moon dirt,” the first instance of this crop produced in this medium. The research, which was conducted in collaboration with Texas A&M University, is described in a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Sara Santos, the principal investigator of the project, said that the work is a giant leap in understanding what it will take to grow food on the lunar surface.

“The research is about understanding the viability of growing crops on the moon,” said Santos, who is a distinguished postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) at the Jackson School of Geosciences. “How do we transform this regolith into soil? What kinds of natural mechanisms can cause this conversion?”

Lunar regolith is the technical term for moon dirt. It lacks the microorganisms and organic material required for plants to live, and while it contains essential nutrients and minerals for plants to grow, it also contains heavy metals that could be toxic to plants.


For their study, the researchers used simulated moon dirt from Exolith Labs, a mix that models the composition of lunar samples brought back by Apollo astronauts.

To create ideal growing conditions in the moon dirt, the team added vermicompost, a byproduct of red wiggler earthworms that’s rich in essential plant nutrients and minerals and has a diverse microbiome. The earthworms create this product by consuming organic material like food scraps or cotton-based clothes and hygiene products that would be otherwise thrown away on missions.

The team then coated the chickpeas with the fungi arbuscular mycorrhizae before planting. The fungi and chickpeas work symbiotically, with the fungi taking up some essential nutrients needed for growth while reducing the uptake of heavy metals.

After that, Santos’ team planted the chickpeas in a mixture of moon dirt and vermicompost in varying proportions.

They found that mixtures of up to 75% moon dirt successfully produced harvestable chickpeas. However, any higher percentage of moon dirt caused issues, with the plants showing signs of stress and early death. The stressed plants survived longer than chickpeas that weren’t inoculated with fungi, showing the importance of their importance to plant health. What’s more, the researchers found that the fungi were able to colonize and survive in the simulant, suggesting they would only need to be introduced one time in a real-world growing setting.

Although harvesting the chickpeas is a big milestone, how the legumes taste and safety is still an open question. The researchers still need to determine the nutritional content of the chickpea and ensure toxic metals were not absorbed during the growing process.

“We want to understand their feasibility as a food source,” said Jessica Atkin, the first author on the paper and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences at Texas A&M University. “How healthy are they? Do they have the nutrients astronauts need? If they aren’t safe to eat, how many generations until they are?”

While this research was initially funded by Santos and Atkin, the project has now been funded by a NASA FINESST grant.