It may be quiet and desolate, but the Earthlings have managed to get the planet Mars talking. In a study published in the journal Earth (in English), Friday, April 1, researchers described footage captured by the Perseverance rover.
This is the end of the deafening silence! #SuperCam unlocks the secrets of Mars’ silence thanks to the French microphone placed on the instrument aboard the rover @NASAPersevere.@IRAP_France @CNRS @CNRS_Toulouse @ISAE_official @ UT3PaulSabatier
– CNES (@CNES) 1 April 2022
Close to landing, in February 2021, NASA robots sent us the first audio ever captured on Mars thanks to a microphone, at a frequency audible to the human ear, that attempted previous missions without success. The analysis of this survey reveals this “the speed of sound is lower on Mars than on Earth: 240 m/s, compared to 340 m/s on our planet, summarized CNRS in a press release. There’s nothing abnormal about it being slower, given the composition of Mars’ atmosphere (which consists of 96% carbon dioxide, while this part is only 0.004% on Earth) and its extremely low pressure (170 times more than on Earth). But the most surprising thing is that there are actually two speeds of sound on Mars, one for the highest and one for the lowest.CNRS records.
“On Earth, the sound of an orchestra reaches you at the same speed, whether it’s low or high. Let’s imagine on Mars, if you were placed some distance from the stage… you would experience a very long time delay. “describes Sylvestre Maurice, astrophysicist at Irap (Research Institute for Astrophysics and Planetology) at the University of Toulouse.
The Martian sound environment offers another quirk. “Sound attenuation is stronger on Mars than on Earth, especially the treble which disappears very quickly, even at close range.”, also wrote CNRS. It will make “a difficult conversation between two people who are only five meters apart”.
that “scientific bet”, which equips space missions with microphones, was successful in the eyes of the man who is also the scientist in charge of the rover’s SuperCam instrument, on which the microphone designed by Isae-Supaéro in Toulouse was installed. Even if this new tool is still in its infancy, continued listening to Mars will help to better understand its atmosphere, which in the past could have looked like Earth and could be beneficial for the appearance of life. Other atmospheres, such as Venus or Titan, Saturn’s moon, can be the subject of sound investigations with the same type of instrument.
–
