What Does Mars Sound Like? We Will Finally Know As Perseverance Rover Will Collect Sound Clips

When the Mars Perseverance rover makes its landing on the Red Planet on February 18, not only will it collect images and rock samples, the data it accumulates might also include sounds from Mars which shall be the first sound clips from any other planet, NASA said as per a report in IANS.?

It has a pair of microphones that will provide audio of arriving and landing on Mars, plus the sounds of the rover working along with wind and other noises.?

"It is stunning all the science we can get with an instrument as simple as a microphone on Mars," said Baptiste Chide who works in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and is a contributor to the ‘SuperCam' microphone.

Sounds on Earth different on Mars

The way we hear sounds on Earth is to be slightly different on Mars. The Martian atmosphere is just 1% of the density as that of Earth on the surface level with a different makeup to ours,?

NASA

"But the discrepancy between sounds on Earth and Mars would be much less dramatic than, for example, someone's voice before and after inhaling helium from a balloon," said NASA's statement.

One microphone aboard Perseverance is on the SuperCam instrument on the mast and it shall be used to record audio of Perseverance and natural sounds on Mars. The aim is to capture sounds of the rover's laser turning rock into plasma.?

NASA

Because the SuperCam microphone is located on the remote sensing mast, it can be pointed to wherever there is a potential sound source. One more experimental microphone aboard the rover shall try to record sounds during the entry, descent, and landing.

"We put a little grid at the end of the microphone to protect it from Martian dust," said Dave Gruel from JPL.?

NASA

"I think it's going to be really neat to actually hear sounds from another planet," he added.?

The Mars 2020 mission is just one section of a larger programme which also includes missions to the moon to prepare for human exploration of Mars. With an aim to return astronauts to the moon by 2024, NASA wants to establish a human presence in the long term on and around the moon by 2028 its Artemis lunar exploration plans.