The sounds of Mars that were recorded by NASA's Perseverance rover

I often publish highly visual articles on this blog. In several of them, I've featured images of other planets in the Solar System.

The landscapes of the planet Mars that were captured by four NASA vehicles
A visual tour of the surface of Mars and what the geography of this planet indicates

Today, however, I'm going to make an exception and focus on sounds, so this content is best followed with headphones. On July 30, 2020, NASA launched a mission to Mars carrying a robotic ground vehicle called Perseverance and an exploration helicopter called Ingenuity. In this case, I'll focus on the Perseverance rover, which you can see here taking a self-portrait with one of its twenty-three cameras (it's as natural as I am when taking a selfie, although it doesn't have to comb its hair).

Perseverance has a unique feature: it's the first rover to land on Mars equipped with microphones, so it can not only capture images of the Martian surface but also record its sounds. In the image below, you can see their location. One is installed on its mast and the other on one side of the rover's chassis.

Thanks to science fiction movies, we have a very quiet idea of ​​Mars, but we have to keep in mind that this planet has a very thin atmosphere, made up mostly of carbon dioxide (95.3%), with some nitrogen (2.7%) and argon (1.7%). On this planet, the speed of sound is slower (240 meters per second) than on Earth (340 meters per second), so if it had a breathable atmosphere (which it doesn't), we would find it difficult to hold a conversation. At 8 meters, sound on Mars is completely lost.

"Thanks to two microphones aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover, the mission has recorded nearly five hours of Martian wind gusts, rover wheels crunching over gravel, and motors whirring as the spacecraft moves its arm", NASA noted in October 2021. Perseverance was targeting Jezero Crater, where the first sounds of Mars heard by humankind were recorded. You can hear some of those sounds in this interesting video published a few days ago by ElderFox Documentaries:

The video also includes some common Earth sounds that have been processed by NASA to show how we would hear them if we were on Mars. With some of my neighbors being as noisy as they are, I'd be in heaven on that planet...
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Images: NASA.