Humans can now hear the haunting, low rumble of wind on Mars for the first time, after NASA's InSight lander captured vibrations from the breeze on the Red Planet, the US space agency said Friday.

The strong gusts of wind, blowing between 10 to 15 mph (five to seven meters a second), were captured as they moved over the solar panels on InSight, an unmanned lander that touched down on Earth's dusty, desolate neighbor November 26.

Two sensors picked up the vibrations: an air pressure sensor inside the lander and a seismometer on the lander's deck, awaiting to be deployed to the surface by InSight's robotic arm.

"This is the very first fifteen minutes of data that have come from the short period seismometer," said Thomas Pike, lead investigator at Imperial College London, during a conference call with reporters.

"It's a little like a flag waving in the wind," he added.

"It really sounds otherworldly, and that is exactly what it is."

InSight is designed to study the interior of Mars like never before, using seismology instruments to detect quakes and a self-hammering mole to measure heat escape from the planet's crust.

Sensing the wind, which moved from northwest to southeast at around 5 pm local time, was "an unplanned treat," said Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

NASA's Viking 1 and 2 landers also picked up signals of the Martian wind when they landed in 1976.

They were measuring it at lower sampling rates, however, not frequencies that would be audible, and did not return sounds that people could listen to.

"Personally, listening to the sounds form the pressure sensor, reminds me of sitting outside on a windy summer afternoon, listening to the turbulent gusts come and go and whistle through your ears," said Don Banfield, a researcher at Cornell University.

"In some sense, this is what it would sound like if you were sitting on the Insight lander on Mars."

An audio track of the Martian wind is available on www.nasa.gov/insightmarswind.

Related Links
Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com
Lunar Dreams and more

Tweet

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only

NASA's MAVEN Selfie Marks Four Years in Orbit at Mars
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Sep 24, 2018
Today, NASA's MAVEN spacecraft celebrates four years in orbit studying the upper atmosphere of the Red Planet and how it interacts with the Sun and the solar wind. To mark the occasion, the team has released a selfie image of the spacecraft at Mars. "MAVEN has been a tremendous success," said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator from the University of Colorado, Boulder. "The spacecraft and instruments continue to operate as planned, and we're looking forward to further exploration of the Ma ... read more