NASA’s Perseverance rover recorded an audio of itself circulating on the surface of the Red Planet, Adding a whole new dimension to the exploration of Mars.
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When the Perseverance rover began making footprints on the surface of Mars, a sensitive microphone it carried marked a novelty: the banging, metallic sounds, and banging of the robot’s six wheels as they rolled across Martian terrain.
“A lot of people, when they see the images, they don’t appreciate that the wheels are made of metal,” said Vandi Verma, a senior engineer and driver of a surface vehicle at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “When you drive with these wheels on rocks, it’s actually very noisy.”
More than 16 minutes of sounds from Perseverance’s 27.3-meter run on March 7 were captured by Perseverance’s entry, descent and landing microphone (EDL), which remains operational on the rover after its historic landing. on February 18th.
The standard microphone was added to the rover to help carry the public during the trip during the landing, but mission members have also been eager to hear the sounds from the surface.
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“If I hear these sounds driving my car, I stop and ask them to tow it,” Dave Gruel, chief engineer of the March 2020 EDL camera and microphone subsystem, said in a statement. “But if you take a minute to consider what you’re listening to and where it was recorded makes a lot of sense. ”
Two versions of the audio clip have been released. The first version features more than 16 minutes of raw, unfiltered sounds from the rover traveling in Jezero Crater. You can hear the noise generated by the interaction of Perseverance’s mobility system (its wheels and suspension) with the surface, along with a sharp scratching noise.
Perseverance’s engineering team continues to evaluate the source of scraping noise, which may be electromagnetic interference from one of the rover’s electronic boxes or interactions between the mobility system and the Martian surface.
The EDL microphone was not designed for surface operations and had limited testing in this configuration prior to launch.
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The second version is a shorter compilation of sounds from the unit’s longest raw recording. For this 90-second version, NASA engineers combined three segments of the raw audio file, processing it and editing it to filter out some noise.
This first audio of a journey through the Martian surface joins a growing playlist of sounds from Mars transmitted to the Earth from Perseverance.
A second microphone, part of the rover’s SuperCam instrument, previously picked up the murmur of Martian wind and the rapid ticking of the instrument’s laser hitting the rocks to reveal details of its structure and composition.
This information will help scientists as they search the Jezero crater for signs of ancient microscopic life, taking samples of rocks and sediments to be returned to Earth on future missions.
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The sounds of the SuperCam were part of a series of system controls through which the rover passed, from disarming Perseverance’s huge robotic arm to making its first meteorological observations using the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer.
The rover has also been looking for a suitable airfield for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter to attempt its first flight tests.
Now that the right place has been found, teams from both vehicles are making plans for the rover to deploy the helicopter, which will take 30 Martian days, or alone (31 Earth days), to complete up to five test flights.
And then the search for ancient life will begin in earnest, with Perseverance exploring terrain that was once thought to be covered in water. Between the rover’s 19 cameras and its two microphones, the experience will be full of images and sounds.
For Verma, who has helped “drive” NASA’s last four rovers to Mars, planning their routes and transmitting instructions so they can drive one day through unexplored terrain, the audio is more than great.
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“The variations between Earth and Mars, we have a sense of that visually,” he said. “But sound is a completely different dimension: seeing the differences between Earth and Mars, and experiencing this environment more closely.”
The sound of Perseverance can be heard here:
EUROPA PRESS