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The first to be equipped with microphones, the agency’s latest Mars rover picked up the subtle sounds of its internal mechanisms during interplanetary flight.
A microphone aboard NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover recorded the sounds of the spacecraft as it sped through interplanetary space. While another microphone aboard the rover is designed specifically to hear the laser shots of the SuperCam instrument, this one is dedicated to capturing some or all of the entry, descent and landing (EDL) sequences, from the firing of the mortar releasing the parachute to the engines. landing on Mars kicking against the rover wheels creaking on the surface.
Data for the 60-second audio file was collected on October 19 during an in-flight check of the camera and microphone system that will pick up some of the drama of landing at Mars’s Jezero Crater early next year.
You can listen to the audio file here:
The low hum you hear comes from the rover’s heat rejection fluid pump. Located on the rear starboard side of the Perseverance, the pump is part of the rover’s thermal system, which will help maintain operating temperatures for vehicle components even on the coldest winter nights. It does its job by circulating the fluid through a heat exchanger mounted adjacent to the ever-toasted multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator and then in a network of tubes scattered throughout the rover’s chassis.
“Apologizing to the person who came up with the slogan for ‘Alien’, I guess you could say that no one in space can hear you scream, but they can hear your heat rejection fluid pump,” said Dave Gruel, chief engineer for the Mars 2020 EDL camera and microphone subsystem. “The microphone we included to hear what it is like to land on Mars was actually able to pick up the Perseverance thermal system operating in the vacuum of space through mechanical vibrations.”
Positive vibes
As any film science fiction enthusiast knows, the void of space is a far from optimal environment for auditory broadcasts. But that doesn’t mean the sound can’t find another way. Sound waves can travel through solid objects. When these mechanical vibrations are registered by an electrical component, they are sometimes transformed into an electrical signal. (Anyone listening to music through in-ear headphones may have experienced this phenomenon as a rustling or pounding noise when the headphone cable touches a surface.)
The audio file was processed by DPA Microphones of Alleroed, Denmark, which produced the EDL microphone hardware in flight to Mars 2020.
“As great as it is to get some audio on spacecraft operations in flight, the audio file has a more important meaning,” added Gruel. “It means our system is working and ready to try and record some of the sound and fury of a Mars landing.”
The EDL microphone wasn’t tailor-made for this mission – or space exploration – and the team isn’t quite sure what to expect from the landing day audio files.
“Getting the sound from landing is a pleasure, not a need,” Gruel said. “If it doesn’t happen, it won’t hinder the rover’s discovery mission at Jezero crater in the slightest. If even part of the landing sequence was captured in audio, that would be great.”
Humanity’s most sophisticated rover is traveling to the Red Planet with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. Together, they will enter the Martian atmosphere on February 18, 2021 at 12:47 PM PST (3:47 PM EST) and land at Jezero Crater 410 seconds later.
Learn more about the mission
A key focus of the Perseverance mission to Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and store Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
Subsequent missions, currently under consideration by NASA in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these cached samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 mission is part of a larger program that includes missions to the Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. Charged with the return of astronauts to the moon by 2024, NASA will establish a sustained human presence on and around the moon by 2028 through NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration plans.
JPL, which is operated for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, has built and operates the Perseverance rover operations.
For more information on perseverance:
mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
nasa.gov/perseverance
For more information on NASA’s Mars missions, go to:
https://www.nasa.gov/mars
Contacts for news media
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
[email protected]
Gray gravestone / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0668 / 202-358-1501
[email protected] / [email protected]
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