Snap. Whoosh. Ping.
The Mars Perseverance rover, the first robot to record Martian sounds with a real microphone, has picked up some weird, out-of-the-box records. The sounds, available below, include the rover’s metallic wheels crossing the desert, a laser taking a 30-hour rock, and the Martian wind blowing.
“On the one hand they feel very wet,” Bruce Betts, a scientist at, an organization that encourages space exploration, told Mashable. “But when you realize that you’re listening to sounds on another planet, with our own device moving on the surface, and a laser damaging some rock, all of a sudden these become deep and exciting. . “
Here they are. NASA recommends using headphones.
Martian Driver
On sol 16 (sol is like a 24-hour-39.5-minute Martian day), the 16-minute durability of the rover recorded driving over the rocky ground of Mars. The clip below is a 90-second edition of these sounds.
You will hear pings, scrapes, and thuds as the six metal wheels pass over the hard surface.
“Many people, when they see the images, are unaware that the wheels are metal,” Vandi Verma, a senior engineer and driver rover at NASA’s Jet Dedication Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement. “When you’re driving with those wheels on rocks, it’s very noisy.”
Changing laser rocks
Martian rock persecution lasted 30 times with laser. They are like snaps or cracks.
“These sounds are just like you would hear them with your own ears if you were standing on the surface of Mars,” said Naomi Murdoch, a rover engineer and researcher at ISAE-SUPAERO (French Institute of Advanced Aeronautics and Space) , at its press conference on 10 March.
Why zap rock with laser?
There are many places for Perseverance to visit as it seeks evidence of microbial life in the past, or at least conditions for life. The laser helps identify the most promising places to go. The fans, which sit at the top of the robot’s mast like a crow’s nest on a boat, are equipped with the laser. Each laser strikes an area the size of a pinhead. As:
The energy of the laser emits the atoms of the target, producing ephemeral fragments. By looking at these light showers, each with a unique signature, the SuperCam can then analyze what target is being extracted, such as potential organic materials. microbes once.
Additionally, NASA planetary scientists can hear zapping sounds on different surfaces, which reveal more information about the rocks, such as their hardness. In a distant world with new places to go, information is best.
Martian Wind
The wind was the first sound recorded on Mars. At about six seconds into the short clip, you will hear a gust of wind on Mars, recorded on February 20, 2021.
There are sure to be many more Martian records to come. “The truth is they ran [the microphone] in the first driving demonstrations they are interested in using it, “Betts said. (The rover ‘s main microphone is also built into the SuperCam.)
What is Betts interested in hearing next? Different rover sounds, like the drill and the rover taking over different rocks. And, of course, something that needed a lot of luck: dust devil. But the microphone had to record carefully when a devil approached, something that is almost impossible to predict. “One of my dream sounds is to hear a devil of dust,” Betts said. “But you had to be lucky.”
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Future missions – to another wild world in our solar system like the Titan or Europa branches – may one day bring back extraterrestrial sounds as well.
“I feel that once you’ve been successful with microphones, you’ll start to see them embedded in spacecraft in the future,” Betts said.