Hear Sounds From Mars Captured By NASA's Perseverance Rover

NASA's Perseverance rover has recorded up to five hours of sounds on the Mars, giving engineers a sense of how the Red Planet sounds different from Earth. Space.com reports: NASA now has a Perseverance rover website filling up with Martian audio, ranging from wind gusts to the sounds of rover driving as it seeks spots to hunt for the signs of life on the Red Planet. In March, we even heard its laser "snapping" (sadly, no pew-pew noise was evident.)

"It's like you're really standing there," Baptiste Chide, a planetary scientist who studies data from the Perseverance microphones, said in a statement from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). "Martian sounds have strong bass vibrations, so when you put on headphones, you can really feel it. I think microphones will be an important asset to future Mars and solar system science," added Chide, who works at France's Institute of Research in Astrophysics and Planetology. The SuperCam mics have been especially helpful for JPL to learn more about the environment in Jezero Crater, where Perseverance has been roaming for about seven Earth months. In May, Perseverance was able to hear the sound of the Ingenuity drone's rotors buzzing from a distance of 262 feet away. "The audio has been useful for investigations ranging from how sound propagates on Mars, and keeping Perseverance well-maintained," the report adds.

Did they hear the Martians?

[rossdee]

OOOLAH!

Meghan Trainor tune

[Tablizer]

So it seems the thin atmosphere dampens high-pitch sounds, so that's why we hear a bass-ish hum.

Re:

[Opportunist]

So it's all about the bass, no treble?

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[suss]

Wait until you hear the sounds from Uranus, that's some deep bass...

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[war4peace]

Deep Bass from Deep Ass...

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[fahrbot-bot]

So it seems the thin atmosphere dampens high-pitch sounds, so that's why we hear a bass-ish hum.

And because there's no trout on Mars ...

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[chas.williams]

So Mars has a global hum as well. I guess we should rename it to the interplanetary hum.

That's nice, but...

[Opportunist]

What do we learn from this?

I get the feeling that at least sometimes, some of the experiments NASA sends out into space is for publicity so they can get justify the expense. I mean, yeah, I can see how getting the population excited about some curves on a sheet of paper that doesn't tell them anything but gives scientists a major stiffy because they show some radiation field or whatnot may be difficult, but cameras and microphones tend to be heavy.

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[drinkypoo]

Cameras and microphones are pretty lightweight these days. I presume they have to be more intensive for use in space (or planets without an atmosphere and/or magnetosphere) but there's unquestionably value to the visual data, and the microphones take up much less space and mass than the cameras. The supercam microphone [nasa.gov] weighs only 30g, while the cam used to see while driving the rover is about 425g. The microphone can be used to listen to noises the rover makes while driving (to detect mechanical faults, or

A bit rubbish

[MrL0G1C]

How long has this equipment been on Mars? Can the motors not be turned off for 1 minute to record sound? It'd be far more interesting to hear less adulterated sound.

I watched the video....

[QuietLagoon]

... all I heard was NASA people talking. Are they on Mars?

sound

[papaleos]

I don't understand people who say the sound shouldn't be too different from the same on the Earth. The clips of the sounds were quite short, but it was interesting to hear something so unusual and located so far from us. Martian Sounds: potential uses for acoustical models in space research buy thesis [theessayservice.org]