Perseverance rover will arrive at Mars with a bang: How NASA will listen
The lone seismic station on the red planet will try to capture the phases of the rover s arrival. Listen - 02:49
An illustration of Perseverance during its descent to the Martian surface. NASA
When NASA s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover lands on the surface of the red planet Thursday, it will carry a microphone that will, hopefully, manage to capture the sounds of its descent and touchdown. But that won t be the only device listening for the rover s arrival.
The Mars Insight lander is located less than 2,000 miles (about 3,000 kilometers) away from Jezero Crater, where Perseverance is set to land. Unlike the more charismatic rovers that are designed to roll around and explore the Martian landscape, one of Insight s primary jobs is simply to sit in one spot and listen for marsquakes and other seismic activity.
As I write this, Nasa’s Perseverance Rover is hurtling toward Mars at a speed of more than 80,000 km/h and is set to land at the Red Planet on February 18. Landing on Mars is no mean feat - the spacecraft will have to decelerate from more than 30 times the speed of sound to stationary in a matter of minutes, while it’s heated to more than 1,000°C by friction with the atmosphere.
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Just over 3,000kms away from Perseverance’s landing site, another Nasa mission, InSight, will be keeping an ear out. InSight’s primary goal is the seismic exploration of Mars, and it has been listening for “marsquakes since November 2018.