This is what humans have learned about sound on Mars

A new study based on recordings made by its Perseverance rover finds that the speed of sound is slower on Mars than on Earth, and that the planet is mainly silent.

A new study, based on recordings made by its Perseverance rover and published in the journal Nature, has found that the speed of sound is slower on Mars than on Earth, and that the planet is mainly silent.

The research team behind Perseverance's French-U.S. SuperCam2 equipment was persuaded that studying Mars' soundscape may help us better comprehend the planet. So the team in Toulouse, France, designed a microphone dedicated to the exploration of Mars in response to this scientific challenge.

The first sounds from Mars were captured by Perseverance on Feb. 19, 2021, the day after it arrived. Between 20 Hz and 20 kHz, these sounds come inside the human auditory range. They demonstrate that Mars is silent, so quiet that scientists mistook the microphone for broken on multiple occasions.

The study states that apart from the wind, natural sound sources are rare. In addition to this, the scientists investigated the sounds produced by the rover itself, such as shock waves caused by the SuperCam laser's impact on rocks and flights by the Ingenuity helicopter.