It’s been just days since NASA’s latest Mars rover, Perseverance, landed on the Red Planet and now we know what it both sounds and looks like up there.Surprisingly, it doesn’t sound like the intense metal of Mick Gordon’s Doom soundtrack nor does it look the demon-filled hellscapes of the game either. That’s because it actually just sounds like wind blowing by and looks like red-dirt hills and craters. Perseverance touched down last Friday and NASA has released nearly four minutes of footage from the rover’s landing, including its first views of the Red Planet.NASA has also released a ton of images from Perseverance and they range from bright red photos of the planet beneath the rover to images of pieces of the rover itself. You can check out a selection of those below.
Perseverance is the first NASA Mars rover ever to be equipped with a microphone, which is why we’re able to listen to the sounds of Mars now. It mostly picked up the sounds of itself moving around on the planet though.
“This set of sounds from the surface of Mars were recorded by the microphone on the side of NASA’s Perseverance Rover on Feb. 20, 2021,” a post from NASA reads. “In the first set, sounds from the rover itself dominate. In the second set, the sound was filtered to make sounds from Mars more audible. You can hear a little wind in the second set.”
You can listen to the two clips of audio via NASA’s post. As you’ll hear, the original audio sounds mostly like a high-pitched buzz with just a touch of wind. NASA cleaned up the original audio to filter out the noise Perseverance is making, which is the high-pitched buzz, and it just sounds like wind blowing by the microphone.
An artist rendition of Perseverance on Mars, Photo Credit: NASA
Perseverance successfully landed on Mars last Friday and its mission is to seek signs of habitable conditions for life on Mars and to search for signs of past microbial life as well. It’s not only equipped with a microphone to let NASA and the world know what it sounds like on Mars, but it’s also equipped with a special drill that will collect core sample of rocks and soil on the Red Planet that will eventually be brought back to Earth in a future mission.
Check out this story about Perseverance’s landing last week, including a full timeline of how the mission went, and then read about how dust storms on Mars glow purple with electrical sparks. You may also want to check out this story about how researching are trying to turn the Red Planet green after that.
Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes. Source