Science magazine celebrates an unusual media package – pictures, movies, and most of all sounds sent to Earth from the Mars Perseverance rover:
But perhaps even more thrilling, an unexpected gift arrived along with the video and the thousands of new images that were downloaded over the weekend: the first sound recording taken from the surface of Mars. The recording, captured 1 day after landing by an on-board microphone, features the whine of the rover, followed by a gust of Martian wind drumming gently against the microphone. Hearing that sound was “overwhelming,” said Dave Gruel, lead engineer for the mission’s entry, descent, and landing cameras, at a NASA event announcing the new video and images. “We’re just beginning to do amazing things on the surface of Mars.”
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Next, after a new software upload is complete, the science team plans to do an in-depth examination of the rover’s instruments, deploy its robotic arm, and take Perseverance for its first test drive on the Red Planet.