NASA’s Perseverance

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has captured the sounds of its own driving on the surfaces of the Red Planet for the first time. Perseverance’s entry, descent and landing (EDL) microphone recorded over 16 minutes of sounds from its 90-foot-long drive on March 7. The audio of the drive was released to the public on March 10. The microphone was initially installed to listen to its touchdown, but mission members have been eager to hear sounds from the surface too. A lot of people, when the see the images, don’t appreciate that the wheels are metal. When you are driving with these wheels on rocks, it is actually very noisy. The rover which weighs around 2,200 pounds and is the size of a small car, touched down on Mars in a risky landing maneuver on Feb. 18 after a roughly 250-million-mile journey through space. Perseverance is expected to study Mars surface for at least two years as it examines the climate and geology and collects rock and soil samples. NASA hopes the rover project, which cost more than 2 billion dollars, will help pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet. The rover joins NASA’s InSight lander, which has been on the Martian surface since 2018, and the Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2021.