The Voice of Mars: After 50 years of Interplanetary Exploration

Swapnil recently read an article on sound recordings from Mars. He read it and tried to convert it his own words and his own understanding.

According to the study of Perseverance rover

NASA's one of the five rover, called Perseverance, captured Sounds from Mars. The study made by observing the recordings conclude that the speed of sound on Mars is slower than on Earth. Since February 2021, it is for the first time the rover have recorded phonic environment of Mars. Scientists from the C.N.R.S and I.S.A.E.-S.U.P.A.E.R.O, organised a data of these sounds, which was collected using the Super.Cam instrument built in France under the authority of the French space agency C.N.E.S.

For 50 years of interplanetary exploration, thousands of images of the Martian surface have returned, but never a single sound or audio clip. Today NASA's Perseverance mission has put an end to this ear-piercing silence of the planet by recording the first ever Martian sounds. Listen to the sounds from Mars, recorded by NASA’s Perseverance: the rover’s mechanical whine and click in a light Martian wind; the whir of rotors on Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter; the crackling strike of a rock-zapping laser. A team of scientists for the French-US Super.Cam instrument installed on Perseverance was told that the study of the soundscape of Mars could advance our understanding of the planet. This scientific provocation led them to design a microphone dedicated to the exploration of Mars, at I.S.A.E-S.U.P.A.E.R.O in Toulouse, France.

Perseverance recorded the first sound from Martian surface on February 19, 2021, just the day after its arrival in the Martian Atmosphere. These sounds were between the human audible spectrum, that is 20 Hz and 20 kHz. The Mars is so noiseless and peaceful that so many times the scientists thought that the E.D.L microphone is no longer working. In addition to this observation, the scientists focused on the sounds generated by the rover itself, including the shock waves produced by the impact of the Super.Cam laser on rocks, and flights taken by the Ingenuity helicopter. By studying the distribution of these sounds from Mars, whose nature is very well understood on Earth, they were able to accurately distinguish the phonic properties of the Martian atmosphere.

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Outcomes of Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover Mission

• The study made by observing the recordings conclude that the speed of sound on Mars is slower than on Earth. The result of the recordings: a new understanding of strange properties of the Martian atmosphere, where the speed of sound is slower than on Earth.

• The most surprising thing is that it turns out that there are actually two speeds of sound on Mars, one for high-pitched sounds and one for low frequencies. Sound reduction is greater on Mars than on Earth, especially for high frequencies, which, unlike low frequencies, are reduced very quickly, even at short distances.

• On Earth, sounds normally travel at 767 mph (343 meters per second). But on Mars, low-pitched sounds travel at about 537 mph (240 meters per second), while higher-pitched sounds move at 559 mph (250 meters per second).

• The variable sound speeds on Mars are an effect of the thin, cold, carbon dioxide atmosphere. They are due to the composition of the Martian atmosphere (96% Carbon dioxide, compared to 0.04% on Earth) and the very low atmospheric surface pressure (170 times lower than on Earth).

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