There's some spaceflight action on tap on Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 27), but you'll have to get up pretty early to catch it. A Soyuz rocket is scheduled to launch from the Russian-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Thanksgiving at 4:27 a.

Lightning has been seen on other planets in the solar system, in the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn. Because Mars is cold and dry, scientists have long thought that electric charge could build up in the air, especially during dust storms, when particles rub against each other and then discharge.