You've probably seen the photos. Endless red dust, jagged craters, and those hauntingly empty riverbeds that look like they haven't seen a drop of moisture since the dawn of time. Right now, if you stood on the surface of Mars, you’d be standing in a desert more brutal than the Atacama. It doesn’t rain on Mars. At least, not today.
But things are changing in the world of planetary science. Honestly, the old "cold and dead" narrative is starting to feel a bit outdated. Between new rover data from 2025 and some pretty wild terraforming proposals involving conductive nanorods, the conversation has shifted. We aren't just asking if it used to rain; we’re looking at the very real, albeit futuristic, possibility that on Mars it will rain again.
It sounds like sci-fi, but the physics of it is surprisingly grounded.
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The Evidence in the Rocks: Mars It Will Rain (Once Upon a Time)
Before we talk about the future, we have to look at the "kaolinite" problem. In late 2025, NASA’s Perseverance rover stumbled upon some light-colored rocks in the Jezero Crater that sent geologists into a bit of a frenzy. These aren't just any rocks; they’re aluminum-rich kaolinite clays. On Earth, you don't get these from a light mist or a bit of frost. You get them from millions of years of heavy, tropical-style rainfall leaching minerals out of the soil.
Basically, Mars used to have a weather forecast you’d recognize.
A massive study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets in April 2025 used landscape evolution models to settle a long-standing debate. Scientists like Amanda Steckel and Brian Hynek at CU Boulder found that the valley networks we see all over the Martian equator couldn't have been carved by melting glaciers alone. The "heads" of these valleys are everywhere—at high elevations and low plains.
If it was just ice melting, you’d only see channels at the edges of the ice caps. Instead, the data points to "distributed precipitation." That’s scientist-speak for: it poured everywhere.
- The Noachian Era: Roughly 4 billion years ago, Mars likely had a thick atmosphere, possibly pressurized to 1.5 bars or more.
- The Raindrops: Geologist Robert Craddock once calculated that at this pressure, Martian raindrops would have been about 7.3 mm—slightly bigger than Earth’s.
- The Landscape: These heavy storms didn't just wet the ground; they physically reshaped craters and built deltas like the one in Jezero.
Why the Rain Stopped
So, what happened? Why did the taps turn off? It’s mostly a gravity and magnetism issue. Mars is smaller than Earth, and it lost its global magnetic field early on. Without that "shield," the solar wind basically stripped the atmosphere away.
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Today, the air is so thin (about 1% of Earth's pressure) that liquid water literally cannot exist on the surface. If you poured a glass of water on Mars right now, it would simultaneously freeze and boil away into vapor. Not exactly prime conditions for a thunderstorm.
The 2026 Vision: Can We Make It Rain Again?
This is where the "Mars it will rain" keyword moves from history into technology. If we want to live there, we need a hydrological cycle.
In August 2024, researchers from the University of Chicago and Northwestern proposed a revolutionary warming method. Instead of the old-school (and mostly impossible) idea of nuking the poles or hauling massive amounts of greenhouse gases from Earth, they suggested using conductive nanorods.
The idea is to manufacture tiny bits of metal—like iron or aluminum already found in Martian dust—and release them into the atmosphere. These rods would trap rising heat about 5,000 times more effectively than the best greenhouse gases.
If we can raise the temperature by just a few dozen degrees, the frozen $CO_2$ at the poles starts to sublime. This creates a feedback loop. Thicker atmosphere leads to more heat, which leads to more pressure. Once you hit a certain pressure threshold, liquid water becomes stable.
The First Storms
If terraforming actually kicks off, the first "rain" won't be a refreshing spring shower. It’ll likely be a messy, sludgy mix of melting permafrost and acidic condensation.
Harvard’s Robin Wordsworth and Danica Adams have modeled how episodic warm spells could be triggered by hydrogen buildup. Their 2025 research suggests that "crustal hydration" (water getting trapped in the ground) could actually release enough hydrogen to trigger greenhouse warming events lasting 100,000 years.
If we can artificially jumpstart this, the clouds will thicken. You’d start seeing "atmospheric rivers"—long plumes of moisture—similar to what we see hitting the California coast. The 2026 NASA GISS abstracts on atmospheric rivers even hint at how convection in these plumes could lead to "extreme local bursts of rainfall." Imagine that on the Red Planet.
The Reality Check
Look, we have to be honest here. We aren't going to be singing in the rain on Mars by 2030. There are massive hurdles:
- The Magnetic Field: Even if we thicken the atmosphere, the sun will keep trying to blow it away. We’d need an artificial magnetic shield at the L1 Lagrange point to protect our work.
- Oxygen Levels: Even if it's raining, the air will still be mostly carbon dioxide. You'll still need a suit, just maybe a waterproof one.
- Scale: Manufacturing enough nanorods to warm a whole planet is a project that would take decades, if not centuries.
However, the fact that we are now using "Landscape Evolution Models" to prove ancient rain existed means we have a blueprint. We know the plumbing of the planet works. We just need to turn the water back on.
What This Means for Future Missions
The National Academies of Sciences recently flagged "understanding the water cycle" as a top-three priority for the first human mission to Mars. When astronauts finally land—hopefully in the late 2030s or 2040s—they won't just be looking for "life." They’ll be looking for where the water went.
If it turns out that Mars is "primed" for moisture, as the latest Nature Geoscience papers suggest, then the dream of a green Mars isn't just a fantasy. It’s a long-term engineering goal.
Actionable Insights for Mars Enthusiasts
If you're following the "Mars it will rain" developments, here is what you should keep an eye on over the next year:
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- Follow the Perseverance Rover Sample Return: The rocks being collected right now contain the isotopic signatures of ancient rain. Once they get back to Earth (the MSR mission), we’ll know for sure how heavy those ancient storms were.
- Monitor "Low-Mass Warming" Research: Watch for updates on the nanorod theory. It’s currently the most viable way to thicken the atmosphere without requiring "unobtainium" levels of resources.
- Look at SpaceX's Starship Payloads: The sheer mass Starship can carry makes it the only vehicle capable of delivering the initial "warming" infrastructure to the Martian surface.
- Check the "Hydrological Cycle" Models: Groups at the University of Chicago and Harvard are constantly refining how $CO_2$ and $H_2$ interact. These models are the "weather maps" for a future planet.
The idea that on Mars it will rain is no longer just a tagline for a Ray Bradbury story. It's a hypothesis being tested with soil chemistry and atmospheric physics. We are moving from observing a dead world to planning a living one. It’s going to be a long, dry wait, but the evidence suggests the Red Planet is just waiting for its next big storm.