NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) on Wednesday released two historic audio recordings from the surface of Mars.
In the first audio clip, recorded with the two microphones of the Perseverance Mars rover, listeners can hear the wind.
In its post on SoundCloud, NASA described the sound as “listening to a sea shell or having a hand on your ear.”
They obtained the audio of the instrument on February 19, about 18 hours after landing on the planet Jezero crater.
“The rover’s mast, which held the microphone, was still tucked into the Perseverance deck and therefore the sound is muted,” they explained.
In the second clip, listeners can hear laser impacts on a rock target in the audio that was taken on March 2nd.
“You can hear the sounds of 30 impacts, some slightly louder than others. Variations in the intensity of zapping sounds will provide information about the physical structure of targets, such as their relative hardness or the presence of weather coatings, “NASA wrote in a headline.” The target, Máaz (“Mars” in Navajo), was about 3.1 m away. “
Both recordings were made using the rover’s SuperCam, which is a rock vaporization instrument mounted on the “head” of the rover’s mast that will help scientists search for fossils on the red planet.
In the clip with audible wind, the pole where the microphone is located was still stored, turning off the sound, that the researcher of the Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace (ISAE-SUPERAO) and planetary scientist Naomi Murdoch discussed during a joint news conference with the National Center for Space Studies (CNES) and NASA on Wednesday.
“First of all, on the surface of Mars, we have a very low atmospheric pressure. In fact, it is 150 times smaller than Earth. In addition, the atmosphere is made up of carbon dioxide, ”explained Murdoch. “And these two factors together mean that sound does not propagate in the same way on the surface of Mars as on Earth.”
“For this reason, the SuperCam microphone is particularly sensitive. And that allows us to record sounds despite the strong attenuation of the Martian atmosphere, ”he said.
The Mars 2020 rover is the third time the microphone has been sent to Mars.