The first thing the Perseverance rover recorded when it landed on the surface of Mars were thumps, pings, and rattles of the robot’s six wheels as they rolled over Martian terrain.
Did you know that the wheels are made of metal?
“When you drive on these wheels on rocks, it’s actually very noisy,” explains Vandi Verma, a senior engineer and rover driver at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Perseverance’s entry, descent and landing (EDL) microphone has been active since the historic landing on February 18.
How do you hear the surface?
Two audio versions of the same unit have been released to the public. The first version features over 16 minutes of raw, unfiltered sounds from the rover traveling through Jezero crater. In it you can hear the noise generated by the interaction of the Perseverance mobility system (its wheels and suspension) with the surface, along with a sharp scratch. The Perseverance engineering team continues to assess the source of the scraping noise, which may be electromagnetic interference from one of the rover’s electronics boxes or interactions between the mobility system and the Martian surface.
A second microphone, part of the rover’s SuperCam instrument, previously picked up the whisper of the Martian wind and the rapid ticking of the instrument’s laser striking rocks to reveal details of its structure and composition.
It is clear that between the 19 cameras of the rover and its two microphones, the Martian experience will be full of images and sounds.
“The variations between Earth and Mars; we already have a visual sense of that. But sound is a completely different dimension: seeing the differences between Earth and Mars, and experiencing that environment more closely,” NASA experts explain. .
