For the first time, we have an audio recording from the surface of Mars – take a listen – Business Insider India

For the first time in history, we have an audio recording from the surface of another planet.

NASA's Perseverance rover landed on Mars Thursday, using a jetpack to maneuver to a safe spot in the 28-mile-wide Jezero Crater. On Saturday, microphones attached to the rover captured an unprecedented audio recording.

"Just imagine yourself sitting on the surface of Mars and listening to the surroundings," Dave Gruel, NASA's lead engineer for Perseverance's camera and microphone systems, said during a Monday press conference. "Here 10 seconds in was an actual wind gust on the surface of Mars, picked up by the microphone and sent back to us here on Earth."

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The experience of listening to it, he said, was "overwhelming, if you will."

The other mic was designed to listen to sounds from the rover, specifically its SuperCam laser instrument, which zaps Mars rocks and soil. Putting a microphone on the SuperCam gives the rover and the scientists analyzing its data another "sense" with which to probe Martian rock. The laser should make a staccato pop when it vaporizes Martian rock.

According to Gruel, both microphones will continue collecting audio during the rest of Perseverance's mission. The rover is poised to spend the next two years scouring the river delta of Jezero Crater for signs of ancient alien life, and should collect its first rock samples this summer if all goes according to plan.

Perseverance is NASA's fifth and most sophisticated Mars rover. The agency equipped two Martian spacecraft with microphones in the past, but one of those - the Mars Polar Lander - failed, and the other - the Phoenix lander - never turned on its microphone.

NASA's InSight lander, which touched down on Mars in 2018, enabled scientists to listen to the Martian wind in a different way. The lander was equipped with a seismometer to study Mars quakes, but the tool also sensed the vibrations that wind caused as it gusted across InSight's solar panels. The low-pitch sounds of these vibrations were audible to the human ear.

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For the first time, we have an audio recording from the surface of Mars - take a listen - Business Insider India