A Sound Break for Your Mind

Episode X: Perseverence

NASA’s Perseverance rover has been traversing the Martian landscape for a year. Its microphones convey more of the emptiness than all the cameras deployed there to date. The place sounds different, thanks to its rarified atmosphere and the physics of sound. The recordings transport us to another world in a way photos and even videos can’t – the sound awakens us to the passage of time and makes more accessible the existence of an environment, stewardship for which we must still prove ourselves worthy. How many places on Earth are so untouched, so silent? 

The sounds Perseverance itself imposes on Mars are humble, small, matter-of-fact, even lonely, connoting inquisitiveness rather than conquest or possession (its soundtrack is more John Cage than John Williams). These little sounds speak of both economy and enormous expense – of spectacular engineering successes and masses of data – of knowledge in creation, knowledge perhaps destined to become wisdom.

“More than 16 minutes of sounds from Perseverance’s 90-foot (27.3-meter) drive on March 7 were captured by Perseverance’s entry, descent, and landing (EDL) microphone, which remains operational on the rover after its historic touchdown on Feb. 18. The off-the-shelf microphone was added to the rover to help take the public along for the ride during touchdown, but mission members have been eager to hear the sounds from the surface, too.” - NASA