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NASA's InSight Lander Captures First 'Sounds' of Wind On Mars (nbcnews.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the first-time-in-history dept.

NASA's InSight lander, which touched down on Mars less than two weeks ago, has recorded vibrations -- low-pitched, guttural rumblings -- caused by wind blowing across the science instruments on the spacecraft's deck. NBC News reports: Unaltered, these vibrations are barely audible, because they were recorded at a frequency of 50 hertz, at the low end of what the human ear can detect, according to Thomas Pike, the lead scientist for InSight's Short Period Seismometer, one of two instruments that picked up the subtle movements. NASA also released a sample of the same audio file that was shifted up about six octaves, to within a range audible to humans. That recording -- which at times sounds like a regular blustery day on Earth and other times has the muted, hollow quality reminiscent of being underwater -- would essentially be what a person would hear if they were sitting on the InSight lander on Mars, said Don Banfield, the science lead for InSight's air pressure sensor and a planetary scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. NASA believes the wind in the recordings was blowing at 10-15 miles per hour from northwest to southeast.

13 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. No microphones on Mars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the Mars Polar Lander was the only Mars lander to have an actual microphone included in the instrumentation - and it was lost when it smashed into the surface.

    We have audio from Titan, but not Mars. Seems a bit odd.

    1. Re:No microphones on Mars by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      We have audio from Titan, but not Mars. Seems a bit odd.

      The Soviets got audio from Venus but I've never found it available for listening :( The closest I've come is that I found a graph of the recording online and in it they've even highlighted such sounds as the camera lens cover being removed with a tiny explosive and then the sound of it landing on the ground. The recording was made to measure wind speed and I'd be really curious to hear it.

    2. Re:No microphones on Mars by beheaderaswp · · Score: 4, Informative

      The venus recording...

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      --
      Another consultant who stuck it out.

      "We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
    3. Re:No microphones on Mars by rmdingler · · Score: 1
      Quora

      The microphone was flown again on the Phoenix lander in 2007 as part of the Mars Descent Imager. However a potential data corruption problem had a small probability of causing an error with one of the gyros during the landing so the camera and microphone were never turned on.

      The Mars 2020 Rover will have microphones aboard.

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

  2. Why the quotes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's waves in a gas, that's real sound, not figurative.

    1. Re:Why the quotes? by omnichad · · Score: 1

      50Hz is certainly in the range of good speakers. It may be feeling more than heard when loud enough, but I'm pretty sure it's in the range of hearing.

    2. Re:Why the quotes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      What you are hearing is the vibration of the solar panel, measured by a seismometer.

    3. Re:Why the quotes? by TheRealQuestor · · Score: 1

      50Hz is certainly in the range of good speakers. It may be feeling more than heard when loud enough, but I'm pretty sure it's in the range of hearing.

      it sure woke up my subs and made me jump in the process. I both heard and felt it. Pretty sure my neighbors did as well.

    4. Re:Why the quotes? by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      50Hz is certainly in the range of good speakers. It may be feeling more than heard when loud enough, but I'm pretty sure it's in the range of hearing.

      Well within. The lowest note on a piano is 27.5 Hz. 50 Hz is almost an octave up from there.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  3. Tasarkar by Tasarkar · · Score: 1

    So amazing

  4. "Audible by human ears" by Dwym · · Score: 1

    Low C, which is two octaves below middle C and the low note on a cello is about 65 Hz with modern tuning of A=440Hz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Young ears can hear in the range of 20Hz - 20 KHz and there are instruments with a lower range than the cello so I don't think it's correct to say that adjusting this up six octaves moves it into the range audible by human ears. The video comments says 100x speedup so that would be 5000Hz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Perhaps it would be better to say that it was sped up so that it would sound more like earth wind?

  5. Re:Sing along everybody! by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    What is this sung to the tune of?

    Baby It's Sandy Outside

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  6. Re: What about wind on Uranus? by cyber-vandal · · Score: 1

    It's still funnier than the homophobic slurs about Trump that infest all the stories here now.