Days after making a successful landing on Mars, NASA's Perseverance rover has sent the first audio from the Red Planet – a recording of a gust of wind.
A microphone did not work during the rover's descent to the surface, but it was able to capture audio once it landed on Mars.
On Saturday, the US Space Agency had released the first photos from Mars, including a high-resolution selfie. The selfie is part of a video taken by several cameras as NASA's Perseverance rover touched down on Mars on 18 February.
Background
A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life.
The rover will characterize the planet's geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (the European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these cached samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
In the days to come, engineers will pore over the rover's system data, updating its software and beginning to test its various instruments.
In the following weeks, Perseverance will test its robotic arm and take its first, short drive.
It will be at least one or two months until Perseverance will find a flat location to drop off Ingenuity – the mini-helicopter attached to the rover's belly – and even longer before it finally hits the road, beginning its science mission and searching for its first sample of Martian rock and sediment.
(With IANS inputs.)
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