The NASA Perseverance rover, which arrived on Mars on February 18, 2021, after having opened its hi-tech eyes wide, sending about 7,000 photos of the red planet to Earth in less than a month, listened to the Martian wind, deploying the own acoustic sensors.
The same American space agency reports it.
These are instruments that are part of the weather station on board Perseverance, called Meda (Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer).
This experimental setup will monitor the air temperature, humidity, radiation, dust and wind at the mission's landing site, the Jezero crater, a region about 45 kilometers long which, according to NASA, once housed a lake and a river delta.
The purpose of Perseverance is the search for possible forms of life, present or past, on Mars, and the collection of samples that will then be brought to Earth in the course of subsequent missions.
But one of its first tasks is, however, to test the environment around the landing crater, thanks also to its acoustic sensors, to prepare the field for the first flight to Mars of a helicopter drone, Ingenuity, that the NASA rover has brought. with him.
The first flight is expected in the spring and, according to NASA, could revolutionize the exploration of Mars.
