NASA records ‘sounds of wind on Mars’ for first time

NASA records ‘sounds of wind on Mars’ for first time. December. 10, 2018 08:53. ashilla@donga.com.
If human beings pay attention to hear "sounds on Mars" after taking off the spacesuit, what kind of sound would we hear? NASA unveiled Friday for the first time sounds of wind on Mars, which were captured by its InSight lander that touched down on the red planet on November 26. The first sounds on Mars from InSight were haunting low rumble sound amid silence. It is the first time that sounds on Mars have been measured.

InSight measured the sounds of winds blowing around it for the first time on December 1 (earth time). Since the lander is not equipped with a microphone, it recorded sounds in two indirect ways. First, a seismometer mounted on the aircraft recorded vibrations that were created as two round solar panels, each 2.2 meters in diameter, spanning on both sides were vibrating due to winds. As northwest winds of 5 to 7 meters per second blew to slightly vibrate the solar panels on December 1, InSight transformed these vibrations into frequencies of sound.

The sounds were similar to the sounds of wind recorded with a mobile phone on a windy day on Earth. NASA plans to concurrently record the sounds and video on Mars directly by installing a microphone on the camera mounted on its "Mars 2020 Rover," a next-generation unmanned Mars exploration robot, which the U.S. space agency will launch in July 2020.