Have you ever wondered what a meteoroid smashing into the surface of Mars sounds like? Well, wonder no more, as NASA’s InSight lander has captured the noise.
Brought to our attention by The Verge, NASA has uploaded the noise to Soundcloud, with a brief explanation for the event.
“NASA’s InSight lander brought a seismometer to the Red Planet to study ‘marsquakes.’ On September 5, 2021, the seismometer detected a meteoroid impacting the planet’s surface, creating several craters in the process,” said NASA in the post.
“It was the first time the sound of a meteoroid impact was captured occurring on another planet, and it might not be what you expect. In the audio, you hear three ‘bloops’ representing distinct moments of the impact: the meteoroid entering Mars’ atmosphere, exploding into pieces, and striking the ground.”
But why make a bloop? That’s not what we’re used to with our familiar Earth gravity. There’s actually a pretty interesting explanation.
As NASA wrote in an official blog post on the event:
“After sunset, the atmosphere retains some heat accumulated during the day. Sound waves travel through this heated atmosphere at different speeds, depending on their frequency. As a result, lower-pitched sounds arrive before high-pitched sounds. An observer close to the impact would hear a ‘bang,’ while someone many miles away would hear the bass sounds first, creating a ‘bloop.’”
The meteoroids later had their impact locations confirmed by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
These craters (located at the Elysium Planitia) were formed between 85 and 290 kilometres from InSight’s location.
“After three years of InSight waiting to detect an impact, those craters looked beautiful,” said Ingrid Daubar from Brown University, who helped co-author the paper on the impacts.
Good job, InSight. We love a good listener. Keep up the good work (until your mission is completed later this year).
You can read more on the event on the NASA website.