When the Perseverance rover landed on Mars, it was equipped with the first microphone to work on the planet’s surface. Scientists used it to make the first sound recording of an extraterrestrial vortex.

Study published Nature Communication by planetary scientist Naomi Murdoch and a group of researchers from the French National Aeronautics and Space Institute and NASA. Roger Vince, professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University’s College of Science, leads the instrument team that made the discovery. He is principal investigator for SuperCam, a toolkit made up of the rover’s “head” that includes Perseverance’s advanced remote sensing tools that include a wide array of spectrometers, cameras, and a microphone.

“We can learn a lot more with sound than with some other instruments,” Vince said. “They take measurements at regular intervals. A microphone allows us to sample, but not exactly at the speed of sound, almost 100,000 times per second. It helps us better understand what Mars is.”

The microphone does not always work; it records for about three minutes every few days. Vince said that getting this tumultuous record was a blessing, if not unexpected. In the Jezero Crater, where the Perseverance rover landed, the team observed about 100 dust devils (small dust and sand tornadoes) after the craft landed. This is the first time the microphone is turned on when someone passes over the rover.

Audio recording of the dust devil, taken along with atmospheric pressure readings and time-lapse photography, is helping scientists understand the Martian atmosphere and weather. Source