Perseverance Rover, a NASA mission, becomes the first to capture the sounds of Mars. The two microphones mounted on NASA's Perseverance rover allowed researchers to discard two of three models created to predict how sound travels on Mars.
Approximately 5 hours of Martian gusty winds, rover wheels crunching across gravel, and motors buzzing as the spacecraft swings its arm have been recorded by the probe.
The Microphones
The SuperCam device and microphone were supplied by the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and a consortium of French research labs under the supervision of the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES).
SuperCam examines rocks and soil by whacking them with a laser and then photographing the vapour. Because the laser pulses hundreds of times per object, the microphone has already captured almost 25,000 laser blasts.
MEDA's sensors collect data on wind speed, pressure, and temperature for up to two hours. The SuperCam microphone can deliver similar data at 20,000 frames per second for several minutes.
Click link here to listen to sound on Mars
Another area of space research that may use audio is spaceship maintenance. Engineers might use microphones to monitor a spacecraft's functioning as technicians do on a vehicle engine. However, with enough data collected, engineers may be able to identify tiny variations, such as more electric current travelling to a particular wheel. This would be in addition to the current health monitoring.
"We'd want to hear these noises consistently," said Vandi Verma, Perseverance's chief robotic engineer at JPL. "We regularly monitor our test rover on Earth for variations in sound patterns that suggest a problem."
The Cameras
While the spacecraft's mission is intriguing, Perseverance's technology is as fascinating. NASA's Mars Perseverance rover has 23 cameras. Nine are engineering cameras, seven scientific cameras, and seven EDL cameras.
The engineering team fitted numerous cameras and a microphone to the Mars Perseverance rover to better capture the entrance, descent, and landing. Perseverance was able to take full-colour footage on its last fall to the surface.
The rover features "improved" engineering cameras to aid the human drivers on Earth. These cameras may also aim at the actions of the arm, drill, and other instruments.
On the Mars Perseverance rover, there are five distinct science cameras: Mastcam-Z, SuperCam, PIXL, SHERLOC Context Imager, and WATSON.
Scientists will be able to uncover anything very massive on this Red Planet with the assistance of these sophisticated cameras and microphones.
