NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in February of last year, has collected and sent for the first time interesting sound recordings from the Red Planet. Researchers have now analyzed these recordings and discovered some surprising facts about how sound behaves on Mars.
Researchers conducted the first acoustic analysis of noises from Mars in a new study published in the journal Nature. Sound travels slower on Mars than it does on Earth, according to an international team of researchers.
Perseverance’s mechanical whine and click in the Martian wind, the buzz of rotors on the Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, and the crackling strike of a rock-zapping laser are just a few of the noises it collected.
The thin, chilly, and carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere of Mars has been discovered to impact the way sound travels on the planet. The speed of sound on Mars was discovered to be slower than on Earth. On Earth, sound travels at 343 meters per second, whereas on Mars, low pitch sound travels at 240 meters per second and high pitch sound travels at 250 meters per second.
Scientists have discovered that noises on Mars can only travel a limited distance, while higher-pitched tones may travel a much longer distance. The quiet that pervaded Mars’ atmosphere piqued the interest of scientists the most.
The planet was so quiet, according to Sylvestre Maurice, an astronomer at the University of Toulouse and the study’s principal author, that scientists initially feared the rover’s microphone was faulty.
“Mars is unusually quiet because of low atmospheric pressure,” co-author Baptiste Chide explained the explanation for the silence. He went on to say that the pressure on Mars changes with the seasons. As a result, he stated that as we entered the high-pressure zone, it landed on it.
The sounds were captured by a microphone attached to Perseverance’s SuperCam, which is positioned on the rover’s mast head. A second microphone, mounted on the rover’s chassis, was also used to record sounds.
This microphone was used to record Perseverance’s Gaseous Dust Removal Tool’s pings and puffs (gDRT). The rover uses this toll to blow away shavings after scraping on a rock to study it.
Published By : VATSAL KOTHA
Edited By : KHUSHI THAKUR
