With Perseverance parked 262 feet (80 meters) from the helicopter’s takeoff and landing spot, the rover mission wasn’t sure if the microphone would pick up any sound of the flight. The microphone can also record ambient noise, like the Martian wind. The instrument’s microphone records the sounds of those laser strikes, which provide information on the physical properties of the targets, such as their relative hardness. The laser zaps rocks from a distance, studying their vapor with a spectrometer to reveal their chemical composition. A new video combines footage of the solar-powered helicopter taken by Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z imager with audio from a microphone belonging to the rover’s SuperCam laser instrument. NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used one of its two microphones to listen as the Ingenuity helicopter flew for the fourth time on April 30, 2021. “Both of these have high scientific value for the next generation of scientists when they’re returned to Earth.Sounds of the Mars Helicopter’s whirring rotors add another new dimension to the historic project.įor the first time, a spacecraft on another planet has recorded the sounds of a separate spacecraft. “I think it’s safe to say these are two of the most important samples we’ll collect on this mission, and we’re all very excited about what we’ve found,” said David Shuster of UC Berkeley, who is the mission’s return-sample scientist, at today’s press conference. The Perseverance team has also acquired evidence about the crater’s past from a sample at another outcrop, dubbed Skinner Ridge, revealing that some rocks indeed came from far away, likely transported by the ancient river before settling in the lake bed. It has a larger concentration of organics, including sulfate minerals, and the location seems more likely to be one that could have supported biology. But Percy’s current location, in a rocky outcrop called Wildcat Ridge, seems more promising in terms of those materials being signs of life. Nine years ago, Curiosity came across organic matter in some rock powder samples. While Farley and his colleagues are excited about Perseverance’s discovery of organic molecules on Mars, it’s not the first rover to do so. That mission will also include two helicopters-built like the Ingenuity craft that’s already aiding Perseverance’s mission-which could be used to retrieve samples. Because there’s hardly any weather on the planet, and few major marsquakes that could harm the samples, the cache should remain untouched until the lander comes. In case something happens to Percy over the next few years, the rover will also cache some samples in a safe, flat place where they can be retrieved easily. The spacecraft loaded with rock samples will transport them to the western Utah desert in 2033. If the mission goes as planned, the team will launch the orbiter and lander from Earth to Mars in 20, respectively. (Perseverance is actually NASA’s fifth rover to be deployed to the Red Planet.) Their preferred plan is to have Perseverance deliver the team’s favorite rock samples to a new lander equipped with a small rocket, which will launch the samples to an orbiter, which will then fly them to Earth. The Perseverance team expects the rover to have a long lifespan, like its predecessor, Curiosity, which is still running. That’s why NASA and the European Space Agency are planning a sample return mission to pick up a variety of rocks from the region and ship them back to Earth in the early 2030s. ![]() But Percy, as the rover is sometimes called, can’t conclusively determine their origin on its own. Still, Farley emphasizes, organic molecules might have been produced by other means-it’s possible to make them through abiotic natural processes too. It appears to be the site of an ancient river delta-a convenient location for microorganisms to have emerged and evolved long ago, and a shot at finally answering the question “ Are we alone in the cosmos?” In fact, the Perseverance team picked the crater as the rover’s landing spot for that reason. “We have discovered rocks that were deposited in a potentially habitable environment in that lake, and we have been seeking potential biosignatures,” which may have been produced by life, said Ken Farley, the Perseverance project scientist at Caltech, speaking today at a press conference at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. These are compounds that contain carbon, and often hydrogen or oxygen, which are likely crucial to life forming. ![]() After trundling around the Jezero crater for 550 Martian days, NASA’s Perseverance rover has amassed nearly half its planned rock collection-including some containing organic molecules, a possible sign that life could have thrived there more than 3 billion years ago.
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