With microphones, they could also check a spacecraft’s performance the way mechanics might listen to a car engine. Engineers use cameras to monitor the wheel wear on Curiosity rover and dust accumulating on InSight’s solar panels. There’s another aspect of space exploration that could benefit from an audio dimension: spacecraft maintenance. “It shows you just how important it is to do field science.” Sound Check “Sound on Mars carries much farther than we thought,” said Nina Lanza, a SuperCam scientist who works with the microphone data at LANL. Information from the helicopter audio enabled researchers to eliminate two of three models developed to anticipate how sound propagates on Mars. NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover carries two commercial-grade microphones, including this one on its chassis. In fact, a few scientists – unsure if they’d hear anything at all – were surprised when the microphone picked up the Ingenuity helicopter’s buzzing rotors during its fourth flight, on April 30, from a distance of 262 feet (80 meters). Because the planet’s atmosphere is much less dense than Earth’s, scientists knew higher-pitched sounds in particular would be hard to hear. The microphone also allows for research on how sound propagates on Mars. “From the weather scientist’s point of view, each perspective – detail and context – complements one another.” “It’s kind of like comparing a magnifying glass to a microscope with 100 times magnification,” said MEDA’s principal investigator, Jose Rodriguez-Manfredi of the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) at the Instituto Nacional de Tecnica Aeroespacial in Madrid. SuperCam’s microphone, on the other hand, can provide similar information at a rate of 20,000 times per second over several minutes. MEDA’s sensors sample the wind’s speed, pressure, and temperature one to two times per second for up to two hours at a time. The mast microphone is part of the SuperCam instrument. NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover carries two commercial-grade microphones, including this one on its mast. The body mic was provided by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, while the SuperCam instrument and its microphone were provided by the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and a consortium of French research laboratories under the auspices of the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES). Credit: NASA/ JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS/IRAP/DPA For the very first time, these audio recordings offer a new way to experience the planet. NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover carries two microphones which are directly recording sounds on the Red Planet, including the Ingenuity helicopter and the rover itself at work.
The second mic sits on Perseverance’s mast as a complement to the SuperCam laser instrument’s investigations of rocks and the atmosphere. One rides on the side of the rover’s chassis. Perseverance is the first spacecraft to record the sound of the Red Planet using dedicated microphones – both of which were commercially available, off-the-shelf devices. This illustration of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover indicates the location of its two microphones.
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