Nell Greenfield Boyce

So I think it's going to be a really, really delicious meal.

And I can't wait to share it with everyone, including our new crewmates.

NASA says that Thanksgiving is an off-duty day for the crew so they can relax and talk with family members on the ground.

Nell Greenfield-Boyce, NPR News.

Mike Fink has been living on the orbiting outpost since August.

The station's crew includes other NASA astronauts, an astronaut from Japan, and Russian cosmonauts.

In a video message, Fink said they'd share a festive meal.

A can of cranberry sauce floated next to him.

They'll also eat other holiday treats NASA sent up, packages of everything from candy to lobster.

Fink said he was going to miss his family back on Earth, of course, but that it was awesome to get to celebrate with what he called his space family.

Nell Greenfield-Boyce, NPR News.

Since the 1970s, scientists have thought that swirling dust on Mars might produce some kind of electrical discharge.

Like on Earth, clouds of turbulent volcanic ash can create lightning.

Now, in the journal Nature, a team says that in windy conditions, a microphone on NASA's Perseverance rover sometimes did more than just hear wind.

Dozens of times, it registered a distinctive pattern of electrical interference followed by the acoustic signal of a shockwave.

They say this had to have been from electrical arcs just a few centimeters long.

They want to learn more about this electrical activity to understand what risks, if any, it might pose to future human or robotic missions.

Nell Greenfield-Boyce, NPR News.

Since the 1970s, scientists have thought that swirling dust on Mars might produce some kind of electrical discharge.

Like on Earth, clouds of turbulent volcanic ash can create lightning.