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NASA has released an audio recording of its Perseverance rover firing lasers at the Martian surface. The strikes, which look like a series of small clicks, are designed to help scientists analyze rocks around the rover. In this case, the target was a rock called “Máaz”, which scientists were able to discover to be basaltic, BBC News reports, which means that it contains a lot of magnesium and iron.
According to the NASA website, the laser is triggered by Perseverance’s “SuperCam” and allows the rover to “zap and study areas on a rock as small as the period at the end of this sentence” at a distance of 7 meters. a way. Once the laser has fired at a rock, it uses its camera and spectrometer to analyze the hot gas in which the rock is vaporized. The sound created by the laser provides additional data on the rock studied.
You listen to the first audio recordings of laser strikes on Mars. These rhythmic tapping sounds heard through my SuperCam instrument’s microphone have varying intensities that can help my team understand the structure of the rocks around me. https://t.co/nfWyOyfhNy
– NASA’s Mars Rover Perseverance (@NASAPersevere) March 10, 2021
Since its successful landing last month, Perseverance has returned a variety of images and audio recordings from the surface of Mars. Although the images of the planet are not new, this is the first time that a rover on Mars has used a microphone from the surface of Mars. The NASA website notes that on two previous spacecraft that carried microphones to Mars, one failed and the other never turned on its microphone.
All of these data points are critical in helping the SUV-sized rover accomplish its mission of searching for signs of life and analyzing the geology of the Red Planet. He is currently scheduled to spend a year on Mars, or two Earth years, exploring the area around his landing site, which is believed to have been a lake billions of years ago.
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