Hear sounds from Mars captured by NASA's Perseverance rover - Space.com

The mission has recorded five hours of audio since landing in February.

NASA's Perseverance rover has recorded up to five hours of sounds on the Mars, giving engineers a sense of how the Red Planet sounds different from Earth.

NASA now has a Perseverance rover website filling up with Martian audio, ranging from wind gusts to the sounds of rover driving as it seeks spots to hunt for the signs of life on the Red Planet.

I think microphones will be an important asset to future Mars and solar system science," added Chide, who works at France's Institute of Research in Astrophysics and Planetology.

Related: Mars helicopter Ingenuity spots Perseverance rover from the air (photo).

Rover engineers still use the mic to capture sounds on the surface, along with the second mic: another off-the-shelf device built into its rock-zapping SuperCam instrument. !

MEDA's sensors are designed to collect samples one to two times a second for up to two hours a time, picking up information on the wind speed, pressure and temperature.

The audio has been useful for investigations ranging from how sound propagates on Mars, and keeping Perseverance well-maintained (in a way similar to listening to a car engine for signs of trouble). !

Elizabeth Howell is a contributing writer for Space.com who is one of the few Canadian journalists to report regularly on space exploration.

She is the author or co-author of several books on space exploration.