March 17, 2021
NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars has just sent back its first initial science results, as well as some new audio recordings of wind and the rover’s laser zapping rocks.
The first target for Perseverance’s SuperCam instrument was a flat, whitish rock that researchers have named Máaz, which is the Navajo word for Mars. Preliminary results show it has a basaltic composition. Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech.
It’s been a month since NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars on February 18, 2021. After initial testing of various components and systems, the rover has started traveling across the ancient lakebed in Jezero Crater. NASA said on March 10 that its first science results were already arriving on Earth, as as well as some new audio recordings of wind and the spacecraft’s laser zapping rocks.
Sweet symphony: NASA rover, Perseverance captures sound of Martian winds
The rover s instrument, SuperCam, delivered audio data to the French Space Agency s operations center in Toulouse that includes the first audio of laser zaps on another planet.
Washington: The Mars rover from NASA has sent first-ever audio readings like the mesmerising sound of Martian wind, captured from its SuperCam instrument, back home.
The instrument delivered audio data to the French Space Agency s operations center in Toulouse that includes the first audio of laser zaps on another planet. It is amazing to see SuperCam working so well on Mars. When we first dreamed up this instrument eight years ago, we worried that we were being way too ambitious. Now, it is up there working like a charm, Roger Wiens, principal investigator for Perseverance s SuperCam instrument, said in a statement on Wednesday.
Less pew, pew, pew and more click, click, click
Katyanna Quach Fri 12 Mar 2021 // 07:34 UTC Share
Copy
NASA released this week the first audio recordings captured by its six-wheeled nuclear-powered rover Perseverance in action, zapping rock samples as the Martian wind eerily whispers in the background..
The trundlebot left terra firma in July, and landed on the Red Planet last month. Since then, engineers have uploaded thousands of commands to test the rover’s instruments in its new environment before it fully embarks on its mission to find signs of alien microbial life. This has included snapping pictures using its SuperCam and recording audio using its microphone.
Alerts
Mosaic view of a Martian rock dubbed “Yeehgo,” captured by the SuperCam instrument on the Perseverance rover.
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS/ASU/MSSS
Unprecedented audio recordings taken by NASA’s Perseverance rover are transporting us to the surface of the Red Planet, allowing us to hear the sound of a gentle alien breeze, and the click-clicking of lasers zapping a Martian rock.
Advertisement
We’re exactly three weeks into the Perseverance mission, so it’s still early days. The project is in the deployment phase, with the Mars 2020 team systematically deploying each of the rover’s many instruments to make sure they’re working properly and configured for the science phase of the mission. Perseverance will spend the next two years or more exploring Jezero crater, so there’s no need to rush things along.
Perseverance Rover’s SuperCam Science Instrument Delivers First Results
Data from the powerful science tool includes sounds of its laser zapping a rock in order to test what it’s made of.
The first readings from the SuperCam instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover have arrived on Earth. SuperCam was developed jointly by the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and a consortium of French research laboratories under the auspices of the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES). The instrument delivered data to the French Space Agency’s operations center in Toulouse that includes the first audio of laser zaps on another planet.