Sounds of Mars: NASA shares the first recordings from the red planet
Space, recording and technology ... What else could excite us more? These sounds of Mars are a jewel to your ear, more for what they represent than for their shape ...
#Marte #NASA # astronomy # recording
Listen to how the Martian wind blows from the NASA InSight probe. The seismometer of the spacecraft and the air pressure sensor recorded vibrations of winds between 4.4 and 6.7 meters per second, blowing in the Elysium Planitia Martian formation. The recording was made on December 1, 2018, and is more surprising when you think about everything that surrounds this technological milestone than the sound itself.
The readings of the seismometer are located in the range of human hearing, but almost all of them consist of content rich in bass frequencies and are therefore difficult to hear through typical multimedia speakers, laptops, or mobile devices.
Thus, NASA clarifies that "We provide the original audio and a transposed version [tonally] in two octaves to make it audible through mobile devices." The famous American agency also suggests that we listen to the document through a sound system with a subwoofer, or through headphones.
It is also interesting to note that the readings of the air pressure sensor were accelerated by a factor of 100 times to also facilitate your hearing. Perhaps the musical creators will jump of joy when they know they can get WAV files without compression through NASA itself.
Credits | NASA / JPL-Caltech / CNES / IPGP / Imperial College / Cornell
