{"id":18244,"date":"2018-12-07T20:53:55","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T12:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasas-insight-lander-captures-the-first-sounds-of-a-windy-afternoon-on-mars\/"},"modified":"2018-12-07T20:53:55","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T12:53:55","slug":"nasas-insight-lander-captures-the-first-sounds-of-a-windy-afternoon-on-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasas-insight-lander-captures-the-first-sounds-of-a-windy-afternoon-on-mars\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s InSight lander captures the first sounds of a \u2018windy afternoon\u2019 on Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_466941\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-466941\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-466941\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181207-marsinsight1-630x630.jpg\" alt=\"Mars InSight lander's solar panel\" width=\"630\" height=\"630\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181207-marsinsight1-630x630.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181207-marsinsight1-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181207-marsinsight1-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181207-marsinsight1-100x100.jpg 100w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/181207-marsinsight1.jpg 1042w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-466941\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A raw image from NASA\u2019s InSight lander shows the spacecraft\u2019s robotic arm in the foreground, hanging over a solar panel. The terrain of Mars\u2019 Elysium Planitia stretches out in the background. The colors look muted because they haven\u2019t been fully calibrated. (NASA \/ JPL-Caltech Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>NASA\u2019s Mars InSight lander is designed primarily to study the Red Planet\u2019s interior, but it\u2019s already produced a big bonus in the form of the first listenable sounds of the Martian wind.<\/p>\n<p>The low-frequency sounds, plus an audio version that\u2019s been bumped up a couple of octaves to enhance listenability, were released today by the mission team at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.<\/p>\n<p>Cornell University\u2019s Don Banfield, who leads the science team for InSight\u2019s Auxiliary Payload Sensor Subsystem, or APSS, said the sound \u201creminds me of sitting outside on a windy afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Dec. 1 detection took advantage of several components of the car-sized lander, including its solar panels.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can think of it rather in the same way as the human ear,\u201d said Imperial College London\u2019s Tom Pike, the science lead for InSight\u2019s Short Period Seismometer.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Sounds of Mars: NASA\u2019s InSight Senses Martian Wind\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yT50Q_Zbf3s?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The solar panels are analogous to eardrums, picking up vibrations as the winds sweep past. Those vibrations are passed along by structures on the lander that would be analogous to the bones of the inner ear. And the seismometer serves as the cochlea for InSight\u2019s ear. Readings from the seismometer are sent along as data to the lander\u2019s electronics and transmitted back to Earth.<\/p>\n<p>The air pressure sensor that\u2019s part of the APSS suite also detected the winds.<\/p>\n<p>Based on the data, scientists calculate that the winds were blowing at 10 to 15 mph, from northwest to southeast. That wind pattern is consistent with the direction of dust devil tracks that were observed in the landing area from orbit, NASA said.<\/p>\n<p>In a news release, InSight principal investigator Bruce Banerdt said the wind detection was an \u201cunplanned treat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut one of the things our mission is dedicated to is measuring motion on Mars, and naturally that includes motion caused by sound waves,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Because InSight\u2019s seismometer is designed to measure seismic activity, the recorded sounds are near the lower edge of the human ear\u2019s sensitivity, around 50 Hz. The APSS air pressure sensor recorded vibrations at an even lower frequency, around 10 Hz. Such frequencies would be heard more easily by elephants or whales.<\/p>\n<p>Even when the frequency is scaled up by two octaves, the audio sounds like the low rumble of white noise.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"More Audible Sounds from InSight's Seismometer on Mars\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IkpZXYrOCyg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Winds on Mars are a lot different from winds on Earth, largely because Mars\u2019 carbon-dioxide atmosphere is only 1 percent as dense as Earth\u2019s. Pike said InSight detected \u201cquite strong winds, but because of the low density they have a different effect.\u201d Martian winds can blow with as much speed as hurricanes on Earth, in excess of 80 mph, but even then, they wouldn\u2019t pack as much punch as the fictional winds that felled astronaut Mark Watney in \u201cThe Martian.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There have been other detections of wind on the Martian surface \u2014 for example, by&nbsp;weather instruments on the Viking 1 lander in the 1970s that had relatively low sensitivity. A microphone was included among the instruments on NASA\u2019s Mars Polar Lander, which failed during its descent to the Martian surface in 1999.<\/p>\n<p>Although the rumble that InSight detected serves as the first sampling of Martian sounds, there\u2019s lots more to come. The spacecraft\u2019s air pressure sensor will be continuously recording atmospheric vibrations&nbsp;\u2014 that is, winds&nbsp;\u2014 for the purposes of adjusting the seismic data that the seismometer will be collecting once it\u2019s set down on the surface. And NASA will be putting two microphones on the rover it\u2019s planning to send to Mars in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>In the months ahead, Banfield said he\u2019s hoping InSight\u2019s sensors will pick up the sounds of gusts or other variations in the steady breeze of a Martian afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo me, it\u2019s fun to imagine that I\u2019m there,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s why we do this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A raw image from NASA\u2019s InSight lander shows the spacecraft\u2019s robotic arm in the foreground, hanging over a solar panel. The terrain of Mars\u2019 Elysium Planitia stretches out in the background. The colors look muted because they haven\u2019t been fully calibrated. (NASA \/ JPL-Caltech Photo) NASA\u2019s Mars InSight lander is designed primarily to study the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[927,367,190,5113],"class_list":["post-18244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-insight","tag-mars","tag-nasa","tag-wind"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18244"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}