Perseverance rover sends sound recordings of Martian winds, laser zaps from Mars

Perseverance is the latest rover from NASA that landed on Mars on February 18 at around 3:55 p.m. ET.  The mission's name is Mars 2020 and the main aim of this Rover was to search for signs of ancient life along with collecting samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) and return to earth. The latest news about this rover on Mars is about the released audio recordings of the Martian winds captured by it. 

Perseverance Rover Sends Sound From Mars

Perseverance is by far the most advanced rover that was sent by NASA and is the 9th spacecraft (since 1970) that was able to successfully land on Mars. This car-shaped rover is powered by plutonium and it touched down at the Jezero Crater. This was one of the hardest targets for NASA to land a rover in this location. In terms of size, this crater is an 8 kilometre by 6.5k m strip.

It is believed by scientists that if it was ever possible in the past that life flourished on Mars, then it could have happened more than 3 billion to 4 billion years ago. This is when water was still flowing on this planet. Earlier in the previous week, Perseverance went on its first long run by reaching 6.4 miles in its first test drive. The total duration of this test drive lasted 33 minutes.

Earlier this week, new images and audio recordings were released by NASA as the rover captured these by using its SuperCam instrument. Both the recordings that were captured a few days by this rover after landing has some low sounds of the winds on Mars. The 3rd file from March 2 included the sounds of the lasers of this rover which impacted a target rock 3.1 meters away. This was the first audio of laser being used on another planet. 

Sound on Mars is a little different from what a person would experience on our planet Earth. There would be differences mainly due to the fact that both the planets have very different temperature, density, and chemistry. Sound on Mars will be quieter, more muffled and will take longer to reach one's ears. The atmosphere on Mars is mostly carbon dioxide, while on Earth, it is comprised of nitrogen and oxygen. Due to this, the sound on Mars is more attenuated.