NASA shares ‘new sounds from Mars’, listen to Perseverance Rover’s audio clip here

(Image courtesy: Twitter/@NASAPersevere)

Washington: Once again NASA's Perseverance rover has made history by recording the low-pitched whirring of the Ingenuity helicopter's blades. This milestone was achieved during the Ingenuity helicopter’s fourth flight and the space agency released the new footage on its Twitter handle on Friday (May 7, 2021). 

The footage was accompanied with a three-minute-long audio track in which the Ingenuity helicopter's blades can be heard humming through the thin Martian air. 

If the individuals listen closely, the humming of the Ingenuity helicopter's blades can be heard faintly over the sound of the gusting wind.

The tweet shared by NASA read, “New sounds from Mars: Our @NASAPersevere rover caught the beats coming from our Ingenuity #MarsHelicopter! This marks the first time a spacecraft on another planet has recorded the sounds of a separate spacecraft.”

Take a look at the video here: 

New sounds from Mars: Our @NASAPersevere rover caught the beats coming from our Ingenuity #MarsHelicopter! This marks the first time a spacecraft on another planet has recorded the sounds of a separate spacecraft.

Turn the volume up: https://t.co/o7zG6mQJzx pic.twitter.com/s8Hm3dhcgg — NASA (@NASA) May 7, 2021

For this 108-second test flight, the Ingenuity helicopter flew southward and over a new airfield. The helicopter soared to twice its previous altitude 33 feet (10 meters) , took pictures, then landed.

The space agency released this unique video just days before the Ingenuity helicopter made its fifth test flight over a new airfield. 

The video shows Ingenuity taking off, and its blades can be heard humming softly as they spin at nearly 2,400 rpm on the 872-foot (262-meter) roundtrip.

A leading news agency reported the mission's engineers saying that, "this is a very good surprise" for them as well. They were initially not sure if the rover will be able to pick up the flight sound, but now that it did, this audio tape will help these mission's engineers a great deal in understanding the Martian atmosphere.

The new recording of Ingenuity's flight "will be a gold mine for our understanding of the Martian atmosphere," said David Mimoun, a professor of planetary science at Institut Superieur de l'Aeronautique et de l'Espace (ISAE-SUPAERO) in Toulouse, France.