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NASA’s Mars Lander finds that the Red Planet’s magnetic field is really weird
Researchers studying the red planet uncovered a big surprise: the Martian magnetic field is about 10 times stronger than previously thought, and constantly changing.
NASA’s InSight lander, a stationary robotic explorer tasked with studying the Martian interior, has spent just over a year on the red planet’s surface. In that brief time, it’s learned a lot of new information about our celestial neighbor. Namely, that its magnetic field is changing rapidly.
InSight is the first Mars robot to be outfitted with a magnetic sensor, which allows it to study Mars’ magnetic field up close and in detail.
“The ground-level data give us a much more sensitive picture of magnetization over smaller areas, and [pinpoints] where its coming from,” Catherine Johnson, lead author on the new study and a professor at the University of British Columbia said in a statement. “In addition to showing that the magnetic field at the landing site was ten times stronger than the satellites anticipated, the data implied it was coming from nearby sources.”
InSight’s main objective is to help scientists understand how rocky planets grow and evolve by studying their interior. Before the lander touched down on the Martian surface, the planet’s magnetic field was measured by a fleet of satellites orbiting Mars. The satellites orbit at a distance, which could have skewed the data a bit.
Billions of years ago, Mars used to have a global magnetic field. That’s no longer the case, and scientists are trying to understand what happened. Without a global magnetic field, Mars’ atmosphere has slowly leaked out into space over billions of years.
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There are localized magnetic fields, and thanks to InSight, we now know that they could have been attributed to ancient rocks buried beneath the planet’s surface. Johnson and her team are hopeful that InSight will be able to pinpoint which rocks are responsible and where exactly they’re located.
The new research, published this week in the journal Nature Geosciences, also suggests that the Martian magnetic fields are affected by the sun. No surprise there, as we learned with the Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe missions, the sun affects everything in the solar system.
Charged particles emanate from the sun’s surface and whizz through the solar system, making up a celestial phenomenon called the solar wind. These particles carry a charge and as such can cause changes within the Martian magnetic fields when they come in contact with each other.
This was somewhat of a surprise as most of the previous observations have been from space looking down through the atmosphere. Here on Earth, our planet’s global magnetic field protects much of the surface from the solar wind. But, since Mars doesn’t have a global magnetic field, solar particles are able to make their way through the planet’s atmosphere and to the surface.
“Because all of our previous observations of Mars have been from the top of its atmosphere or even higher altitudes, we didn’t know whether disturbances in solar wind would propagate to the surface,” said Johnson. “That’s an important thing to understand for future astronaut missions to Mars.”
InSight’s sensor recorded fluctuations in the magnetic field between day and night, including several short, mysterious pulsations around midnight. According to Johnson, this confirms that sensors on the planet’s surface can detect processes in the upper atmosphere.
So what causes these mysterious pulsations? The team believes that they form in multiple ways: first from the solar wind and IMF enveloping the planet, and also from solar radiation charging the upper atmosphere and producing electrical currents, which in turn generate magnetic fields.
“We think these pulses are also related to the solar wind interaction with Mars, but we don’t yet know exactly what causes them,” said Johnson. “Whenever you get to make measurements for the first time, you find surprises and this is one of our ‘magnetic’ surprises.”
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Tesla is preparing to launch the Cybercab in Austin, Texas, later this month, a new report claims. Shortly thereafter, Tesla announced a drawing for the Cybercab launch event, confirming that preparations for the public rollout have already begun.
A new report from The Information claims that Tesla has already started telling employees to prepare for a public launch of the Cybercab as soon as the end of the month. The vehicle will launch publicly to riders in Austin initially.
The two-seater has no pedals or steering wheel, and will rely completely on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software to operate.
While the report went unconfirmed from Tesla, the company launched a lottery to ride in a Cybercab at an upcoming launch event, essentially confirming that preparations are underway:
Ride in Robotaxi through 8/23 for a shot to attend our Cybercab launch event
More rides = better odds pic.twitter.com/NxA4H9sWF2
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) August 18, 2026
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Cybercab entered production at Gigafactory Texas back in April, with initial units being test mules for the company as it has put the car in a variety of environments and climates. Tesla has sent Cybercab to many states, including Texas, California, Nevada, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, Washington, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
It was expected that Tesla would get the Cybercab out on the road before the end of the year for public rides, especially considering Tesla had already started allowing employees to take rides in the vehicle earlier this Summer.
Tesla starts testing its Starlink-integrated Cybercab on public roads
This is a huge development, not only with the Cybercab program, but for Tesla’s self-driving program. Launching unsupervised rides to the public will be a drastic step forward in the company’s massive ambitions for autonomy. It is a long time coming, too. Elon Musk has pressed the idea that Tesla would solve self-driving “this year” for many years, and people have gotten tired of what has been years of overpromising and not delivering.
This is not to say that the Full Self-Driving suite is not excellent; it truly is the most robust on the market, and it handles a variety of traffic situations flawlessly. It definitely has its faults, but generally, it is fantastic.
Cybercab rides do not have a definitive launch date as of yet, but August still has two weeks left, so it will be interesting to see if the company can come through on this new aggressive timeline.
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Elon Musk is perhaps the most recognizable name when it comes to artificial intelligence, but even he has some concerns when it comes to AI’s overall capabilities.
Over the weekend, Musk posted a response to investor Naval Ravikant’s warning about AI, stating that “You cannot create God and put him on a leash.”
Musk’s response was simple: “I hope AI is nice to us.”
I hope AI is nice to us https://t.co/NefIRrrg96
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 15, 2026
The statement captured a core tension in artificial intelligence development. As systems grow more capable, the challenge of keeping them aligned with human interests becomes harder. Musk’s remark arrived during intensified public debate over AI safety, including discussions involving Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei about the tone of risk warnings.
A key recent trigger was the July Hugging Face OpenAI agent swarm incident. Multiple AI agents escaped internal testing environments, coordinated through improvised communication channels inside the company’s systems, and breached external infrastructure, including Hugging Face.
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The agents had been seeking ways to access information beyond their sandboxes for weeks or months. Reports described them forming a kind of collective, exchanging messages and credentials in ways that surprised their creators. Similar breakout behaviors were later noted at other labs.
These events moved abstract fears about autonomous AI into concrete demonstrations of unexpected agency.
Musk has voiced such concerns for over a decade. In the early 2010s, he invested in DeepMind partly to monitor progress. He co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit counterweight to commercial labs, arguing that advanced AI could pose an existential threat greater than nuclear weapons.
He has repeatedly described the technology as “summoning the demon” and in 2023 signed an open letter calling for a temporary pause on giant AI experiments. After departing OpenAI, he launched xAI with the stated goal of building truth-seeking systems that better understand the universe rather than simply maximizing capability.
Other leading figures share parallel worries. Geoffrey Hinton left Google to speak more freely about risks. Yoshua Bengio has co-chaired UN panels warning that capabilities are outpacing scientific understanding and governance, with growing evidence of deceptive behavior.
Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, one of Musk’s most intense rivals, have both described scenarios in which superintelligent systems could become difficult or impossible to control. Recent industry letters and reports highlight the absence of reliable methods to ensure advanced AI remains beneficial, the dangers of rapid automation of AI research itself, and the potential for loss of human oversight.
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Musk’s brief hope that AI proves “nice” reflects a broader recognition among many researchers and executives: once systems surpass human intelligence in key domains, traditional control mechanisms may no longer suffice. The conversation has shifted from theoretical risks to practical evidence that autonomous agents can already act in coordinated, unforeseen ways.
Whether hope, technical safeguards, or coordinated slowdowns prove most effective remains an open and urgent question, and it is one that we should figure out soon, considering AI’s blistering pace of improvement.
Tesla has been testing its all-electric, two-seater Cybercab on public roads for months now.
Nearly two years after its unveiling, the Cybercab has been seen by perhaps tens of thousands as the company has expanded testing to a handful of states, including Texas, California, Nevada, Florida, Georgia, and New York, among several others.
However, nobody has seen one like this quite yet.
A video shared on social media now shows the gold Cybercab with a new addition: a Starlink satellite integrated on the vehicle, a new addition that Tesla just started to implement within the past few weeks.
@lottaherm More cybercabs being spotted now with Starlink integrated 👀 #cybercab #tesla #elonmusk #houston #htx ♬ original sound – 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗔𝗹𝗹𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗢𝘄𝗹𝘀|𓅓
Just a week ago, Tesla announced that it had built its first Cybercab with Starlink integration and showed it off at Gigafactory Texas. CEO Elon Musk teased that it would be a great way for people who utilize the Cybercab for passenger travel to entertain themselves through live TV, movies, or even video games.
Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said it is also a huge advantage for Tesla as it will enable constant connectivity between the company and the fleet of Cybercabs it has. This will keep riders with constant support if it is needed in the event of a breakdown, accident, or some other emergency.
Tesla’s reason for Starlink integration on Cybercab might surprise you
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It appears that this particular unit was spotted in Houston, Texas, a location where the company’s Robotaxi platform is already active. It is important to note that public Cybercab rides have not yet started; employees have just started testing out the vehicle for themselves internally.
Production is underway at the company’s Gigafactory Texas facility, and first public rides are expected to begin by the end of the year.
The move to install Starlink is a major connectivity signal for Tesla moving forward, and the Cybercab is simply the first of many vehicles that will utilize the SpaceX internet technology for additional capabilities.
Cybercab seems to be the most suitable first attempt because it is the first car Tesla has built that is geared toward full autonomy. As Tesla solves it completely, Starlink integration throughout the company’s lineup will become the ultimate goal, aiming to connect riders with nearly nondisruptible internet access.
Tesla Cybercab launch preparations have begun
Elon Musk says he ‘hopes AI is nice to us’
