NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) released two historic audio recordings of the surface of Mars on Wednesday.
In the first audio clip, recorded with the Perseverance Mars Rover’s two microphones, listeners can hear wind.
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In their post on SoundCloud, NASA described the sound as “listening to a seashell or putting a hand over the ear.”
They got the audio from the instrument on February 19, about 18 hours after landing on the planet’s Jezero crater.
“The rover’s mast, which held the microphone, was still on the deck of Perseverance, so the sound was muffled,” they explained.
In the second clip, listeners can hear laser impacts on a rock target in audio captured on March 2.
“The sounds from 30 impacts are audible, some slightly louder than others. Variations in the intensity of the zapping sounds will provide information about the physical structure of the targets, such as the relative harshness or the presence of weathering layers,” NASA wrote in a caption. “The target, Máaz (‘Mars’ in Navajo), was about 3 meters away.”
Both recordings were taken with the rover’s SuperCam, a rock vaporizing 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 mast on which the microphone sits was still stowed away, muting the sound, which Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace (ISAE-SUPERAO) researcher and planetary scientist Naomi Murdoch discussed during a joint news conference with Center National D’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and NASA on Wednesday.
“First of all, we have very low atmospheric pressure on the surface of Mars. It’s actually 150 times lower than on Earth. Plus, the atmosphere is made up of carbon dioxide,” Murdoch explains. “And these two factors together mean that sound does not propagate on the surface of Mars in the same way as it does on Earth.”
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“That’s why the SuperCam microphone is very sensitive. And it allows us to record sounds despite the strong attenuation in the Martian atmosphere,” she said.
The Mars 2020 rover is the third time the microphone has been sent to Mars.