The Perseverance rover picked up audio evidence of electric discharges in the red planet’s atmosphere.A towering dust devil casting a shadow over the Martian surface, captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2012.

During the weekend, the orbits of Earth and Saturn will combine to create an interplanetary optical illusion for anyone with a good telescope and clear skies.Saturn’s rings, observed by the Cassini spacecraft. They will be all but invisible when viewed from Earth on Sunday.

New research suggests that Theia, the object whose collision with Earth is theorized to have caused the formation of the moon, came from closer to the sun.Artist’s impression of the collision between the early Earth and Theia, with the sun in the far distance, roughly 100 million years after the formation of the solar system.

With the government reopened, the space agency at last released pictures captured by a fleet of government spacecraft of an object that came from beyond our solar system.

The moon is far from full this weekend, which could mean good fireball viewing for night sky watchers.The Leonid meteor shower viewed from North Macedonia in November 2020.