These sounds are really mundane.
NASA agency Rover perseverance She recorded 60 seconds of Mars’ sound on Saturday (February 20), just two days after her sound Picture perfect landing inside Jezero Crater. The newly released coil, which features a mechanical wheeze from the rover and Rustle the red planet breezeIt is the first real sound to be captured on a planet other than Earth.
“Really neat – amazing, if you will,” said Dave Gruel of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, during a news conference Monday (Feb. 22). The sound was revealed during that briefing, as it were Jaw-dropping video captured persistence During its entry, disembarkation and landing on February 18th (EDL).
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Gruel is responsible for the EDL camera system at Perseverance, Which includes a commercial off-the-shelf microphone Made by the Danish company DPA Microphones. This instrument was supposed to have picked up the sound while the rover was rising. “Seven minutes of horror“Landing but not, for reasons that Gruel and colleagues are investigating. The microphone appeared soon enough, however, and recorded a historical audio snippet on Saturday.
Perseverance, the heart of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission of $ 2.7 billion, holds a second microphone as well – a microphone built into the SuperCam rocker.
SuperCam has not yet been launched; The team is still performing health checks on Perseverance tools and subsystems. Once the SuperCam arrives online, the microphone will help the task force identify target rocks, revealing how strong they are and whether they have a thin film. The microphone can also pick up a variety of other sounds as well, such as a breeze of Mars and a crunch of dirt under the wheels of perseverance.
Perseverance might be able to record stereo sound on Mars at some point, using EDL and SuperCam mics in concert. However, there are no guarantees; The EDL Microphone has not been optimized for use on the harsh, frozen surface of Mars, so it’s unclear how long it will last. Gruel told Space.com last week.
March 2020 is an ambitious mission that would boost exploration of the Red Planet in several ways, if all goes according to plan. For example, persistence will search for signs of ancient Mars life on the grounds of Jezero Island, which hosted a lake and river delta billions of years ago. The spacecraft will also collect and temporarily store dozens of samples, which will be brought back to Earth by a joint US space agency (NASA) and European Space Agency campaign. Maybe In early 2031.
The mission also holds several technical offers. The first, an instrument called the MOXIE (“Martian Oxygen Experience”), is designed to generate oxygen from the thin Martian atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide. Another is The creativity of the Mars helicopter, Which aims to become the first helicopter to fly in an extraterrestrial world.
The Ingenuity Quiz campaign will be the mission team’s first major activity after having Perseverance up and running. 4 lbs. (1.8 kg) Helicopter flights are expected this spring, and one or both microphones may record date-making sorties.
High-frequency sounds attenuate very quickly Mars atmosphere, Which is only 1% dense as Earth’s. But members of the mission team told Space.com that the microphones may be able to capture some of the spinning, low-pitched wash.
Gruel said that such a sound would have value beyond the scientific ideas it provides, helping to bring the Red Planet closer to all of us.
During Monday’s press conference, he told a story about a conversation he had several years ago while he was touring the JPL. One participant in the tour was particularly excited about the planned Perseverance microphones. I asked Growell why, and she replied that her sister had poor eyesight, and thus she couldn’t get the same enjoyment and inspiration from the Mars rover photos that most of us take for granted.
“And it sticks with me,” said Gruel.
“I wish I had already picked up that person’s name,” he added. “I’d like to get in touch with her now and say, we’ve done it. I hope your sister has enjoyed it.”
While the newly released recording shows the first true sound on Mars, it is not the first sound of any kind captured on the red planet. NASA’s InSight landing craft I heard the Martian wind Shortly after landing in November 2018, after processing data collected by the air pressure sensor and seismometer.
Mike Wall is the author ofAbroad“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustration by Karl Tate), a book on the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
