Ever wonder how a spacecraft on another planet sounds? You’re in luck, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used one of its two microphones to record the sounds of the Ingenuity helicopter as it flew for the fourth time on April 30, 2021. Perseverance was parked approximately 262-feet from the helicopter’s takeoff and landing spot, but despite the helicopter’s blades spinning at 2,537 rpm, the sound is muffled by the thin Martian atmosphere.
The audio, recorded in mono, was made easier to hear by isolating the 84 hertz helicopter blade sound, thus reducing the frequencies below 80 hertz and above 90 hertz, while also increasing the volume of the remaining signal. However, some frequencies needed to be clipped to bring out the helicopter’s hum, which can be heard best when it passes through the field of view of the camera.
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This is a very good surprise. We had carried out tests and simulations that told us the microphone would barely pick up the sounds of the helicopter, as the Mars atmosphere damps the sound propagation strongly. We have been lucky to register the helicopter at such a distance. This recording will be a gold mine for our understanding of the Martian atmosphere,” said David Mimoun, a professor of planetary science at Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace (ISAE-SUPAERO) in Toulouse, France, and science lead for the SuperCam Mars microphone.
