The Mars rover Perseverance is making history once again, this time capturing the first-ever sound of a Martian dust devil, according to a new report released on Tuesday.
While dusty whirlwinds have been caught on the rover’s camera before, the microphone has never been turned on until now.
This is because the microphone on the rover is only on occasionally, less than 3 minutes per day, meaning that there was a 0.5% chance that the event would have been captured, the team behind the report estimated.
Researchers shared their findings in the journal Nature Communications. They said that the audio, which is about 10 seconds, depicts grains of dust pinging off the microphone or the rover.
The dust devil’s wind gusts reach up to 25 miles per hour, and while it sounds similar to what would be heard on Earth, the clip is quieter because of Mars’ thin atmosphere, the researchers shared.
The event that the audio comes from happened last year, University of Toulouse professor and lead author of the study Naomi Murdoch shared in the study.
Dust devils on Mars have been photographed for decades but never heard until now, marking a big break through for the rover that touched down in February of 2021. In total, Murdoch said that the microphone caught 308 dust pings.
Murdoch said that capturing the event was “definitely lucky,” saying that over the 84 minutes of collected audio in the rover’s first year, there has been “only one dust devil recording.”
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