The microphone aboard Mars Rover Perseverance has captured a number of interesting noises in its explorations, but for the most part, “a deep silence prevails” on the red planet. You can still hear the “puff, whir, zap” of the rover’s tools, the hum of the Ingenuity helicopter and the woosh of a gentle Martian breeze in this collection of sounds from the expedition.
We previously heard the sound of Mars indirectly when researchers repurposed some sensors on the InSight Mars Lander, but this is a much more purposeful recording. By comparing how an action or event sounds on Mars to how it would sound on Earth, you can learn about the atmosphere and other factors that affect it.
“It’s a new sense of investigation we’ve never used before on Mars,” said astrophysicist Sylvestre Maurice of the University of Toulouse, lead author on a study published today in Nature. As t …
