What does a flying drone sound like on Mars? For the first time, NASA was able to capture audio of the Ingenuity helicopter flying over the Martian surface.
The footage, shared today by the space agency in a video clip, shows Ingenuity embarking on its fourth flight over the planet on April 30. As it takes off, you can hear the faint, but steady hum of the drone’s propellers whirl in the air.
The drone flies up to 872 feet. Meanwhile, the Martian wind blows nearby. (We recommend wearing a pair of headphones to hear the audio.)
NASA captured the sounds and video from the Perseverance rover, a 2,260-pound robot that traveled with Ingenuity to the Red Planet. The rover contains both cameras and a microphone, but NASA had to clean up some of the recorded audio by isolating one of the drone’s propellers, and then increasing the volume, to make the sounds easier to hear over the Martian wind.
“With Perseverance parked 262 feet (80 meters) from the helicopter’s takeoff and landing spot, the rover mission wasn’t sure if the microphone would pick up any sound of the flight,” NASA wrote in a post. “Even during flight, when the helicopter’s blades spin at 2,537 rpm, the sound is greatly muffled by the thin Martian atmosphere.”
“We have been lucky to register the helicopter at such a distance,” added David Mimoun, a professor of planetary science involved in the mission. “This recording will be a gold mine for our understanding of the Martian atmosphere.”
NASA hopes to capture even more audio from future Ingenuity flights. The agency’s plan is to keep flying the drone to better learn how “aerial scouting” could help with future exploration of Mars and other planets.
