NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) released two historic audio recordings from the surface of Mars on Wednesday.
In the first audio clip, recorded using the two microphones of the Perseverance Mars rover, listeners can hear the wind.
In their post on SoundCloud, NASA described the sound as “listening to a shell or having a hand with a cup over its ear.”
They got the sound 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 stored on the deck of Perseverance and so the sound is muffled,” they explained.
In the second clip, listeners can hear the impacts of the laser on a stone target in audio format that was captured on March 2.
“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 the targets, such as the relative hardness or the presence of weather coatings, “NASA wrote in a legend. “The target, Máaz (” Mars “in Navajo), was about 3.1 meters away.”
Both recordings were made using the rover’s SuperCam, which is a rock vaporizer mounted on the “head” of the rover’s mast, which will help scientists hunt fossils on the red planet.
In the sound wind clip, the mast on which the microphone sits was still stored, muffling the sound, which the researcher of the Higher Institute of Aeronautics and Space (ISAE-SUPERAO), researcher and planetary scientist Naomi Murdoch, discussed during a joint news conference with the Center National D’Etudes Spatiales (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 on Earth. In addition, the atmosphere is made up of carbon dioxide, ”Murdoch explained. “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, ”she said.
The Mars 2020 rover marks the third time the microphone has been sent to Mars.