West Virginia University investigates how the solar wind and space weather interact with planets, using space plasma physics to uncover new insights into the Zwan-Wolf effect at Mars. If physical collisions don’t control how the solar wind moves around solar system bodies, what does? The topic of space weather, then, can be viewed as one big puzzle that is comprised of many parts. The impact of the space weather event amplified the effect, making it observable by the MAVEN spacecraft. Similar to tropical storms here on Earth, space weather events are a rare occurrence.