THE PERSEVERANCE rover has been studying rocks and minerals on Mars since landing there in February 2021. It's also been listening. A microphone mounted on the rover's SuperCam instrument can capture snippets of sound and send them back to Earth. Another microphone, mounted on the side, can monitor sounds coming from the rover itself. In April 2022, scientists reported that they'd used those soundbites to calculate the speed of sound on Mars. It was part of the first-ever analysis of the acoustic soundscape on Mars, and it didn't turn out exactly as predicted.
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