Latest news with #SpaceExploration
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Listen to the eerie sounds of Mars recorded by a NASA rover
A NASA rover ambling over the red desert planet for the past four years has been recording audio of Mars. In this alien world 156 million miles away in space, even the everyday whispers of wind and mechanical parts are exotic to human ears. Scientists say that's because the Martian atmosphere is about 1 percent as dense as Earth's, which alters the volume, speed, and characteristics of sound. How to describe what Perseverance has heard at Jezero crater? Well, it doesn't not sound like the eerie ambient noise of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, but you can listen for yourself. Like an aspiring DJ or singer-songwriter, Perseverance has a Soundcloud account, where people can experience the latest Martian tracks. NASA shared this week some of the strange audio the rover has captured. You can find a sampling further down in this story. SEE ALSO: A NASA Mars rover looked up at a moody sky. What it saw wasn't a star. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech illustration When the rover touched down on Mars in 2021, it didn't just bring cameras, drills, and tubes for rock samples. It also carried two microphones — nothing special, just a couple of off-the-shelf devices anyone could buy online. The only modification NASA made was to attach little grids at the end of the mics to protect them from Martian dust. One of the microphones, mounted on the rover's head, is known as the SuperCam and has recorded most of the audio; another is attached to the body. What they've picked up is changing the way scientists think about the Red Planet. This is the first time humanity has ever been able to listen to the din of another world. "We've all seen these beautiful images that we get from Mars," said Nina Lanza, a Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist, in a NASA video, "but having sound to be able to add to those images, it makes me feel like I'm almost right there on the surface." NASA shared Martian audio in the above post on X. Researchers published the first study of acoustics on Mars in the journal Nature, based on Perseverance's recordings, in 2022. Apparently, the Red Planet is a much quieter place than originally thought, and not just because it's unpopulated. It's so silent, in fact, there was a time the rover team believed the mics had stopped working. But Perseverance just wasn't getting much material from its surroundings. That's largely due to Mars' low-atmospheric pressure, though the pressure can vary with the seasons. The team studying these sounds found that Mars' thin air, composed mostly of carbon dioxide, makes sound waves behave differently. On Earth, sound travels at roughly 767 mph. On Mars, deeper pitches move at about 537 mph, with higher ones traveling a bit faster, at 559 mph. The thin atmosphere also causes sound to drop off quickly. A sound that could be heard from 200 feet away on Earth falls silent after 30 feet on Mars. Higher-pitched tones have an even shorter range. The microphones mounted to Perseverance are off-the-shelf devices anyone could buy off the internet. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech "Sounds on Earth have very rich harmonics. You can hear multiple frequencies. It gets a really nice depth to the sound," said Justin Maki, a NASA scientist, in a video. "On Mars, the atmosphere attenuates a lot of those higher frequencies. So you tend to hear the lower frequencies, and it's a much more isolated sound, a little more muted than the sounds we hear on Earth." With this data, scientists have learned that some of their earlier models for how they thought sound should move on Mars missed the mark. "The Martian atmosphere can propagate sound a lot further than we thought it could," Lanza said. Translation: The Red Planet can literally carry a tune.
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS Elon Musk reveals new bombshell plan as he leaves Trump's White House
Elon Musk has big plans following the fallout with President Donald Trump. The billionaire hosted a live event Thursday to discuss the future of SpaceX, revealing the company's massive Starship rocket is set to launch to Mars next year. Musk laid out his long-held dream of colonizing the Red Planet, using next-generation rockets, surrounding the Martian world with internet satellites and eventually building habitats. This is a developing story... More updates to come.
ABC News
7 days ago
- Politics
- ABC News
Will Elon Musk send humans to Mars?
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has ambitious plans for the Mars. He's spoken of a cargo mission next year, human landings before 2031 and a fully self sustained colony by 2050. Starship, the futuristic SpaceX rocket, is poised for a ninth uncrewed test launch, aiming for a clean flight after the last two attempts ended in explosive failure. So can Elon Musk achieve his mission for the Red Planet? Sarah Morice spoke with Leroy Chau, a former Astronaut and International Space Station commander.
The National
27-05-2025
- Business
- The National
Elon Musk's Starship to launch on ninth test flight following recent setbacks
SpaceX is to carry out the ninth test flight of its deep-space rocket Starship early on Wednesday, as it aims to keep its bold ambitions to journey to Mars on course. The launch in Texas follows failed attempts to recover the Starship spacecraft during test flights seven and eight, which set back SpaceX 's development of the 121-metre rocket. Starship, a two-stage rocket system that consists of the Super Heavy Booster and the Starship spacecraft, will release eight mock Starlink satellites during the test flight. The last two test flights ended in failure before the satellites could be deployed. 'The Starship upper stage will repeat its suborbital trajectory and target objectives not reached on the previous two flight tests, including the first payload deployment from Starship and multiple re-entry experiments geared towards returning the vehicle to the launch site for catch,' SpaceX said in a statement. The test flight is scheduled for 3.30am GST on Wednesday, with a live broadcast starting 30 minutes earlier on SpaceX's website. Despite the loss of the Starship spacecraft in the previous two test flights, the company managed to recover the Super Heavy Booster by capturing it mid-air with mechanical arms on a launch tower. This time, however, SpaceX plans a splashdown of the vehicle to test new landing techniques and collect data. Despite back-to-back failures this year, the company has made significant progress in developing the Starship rocket system since its first test flight in 2023. These have included recovering the booster using the mechanical arms and bringing back the spacecraft after some flights. SpaceX founder Elon Musk is developing Starship to eventually send humans to Mars. The billionaire is due to give an update on Tuesday on SpaceX's plans to 'make life multiplanetary'. This will be streamed live on the X platform at 8.55pm GST. The company also has a $2.89 billion contract with Nasa to develop a Starship system to land astronauts on the Moon. It has been carrying out test flights to prepare the rocket for commercial operations. SpaceX recently secured permission to increase its launches from five to 25 per year from the US Federal Aviation Administration. Dr Sarath Raj, project director of the Satellite Ground Station at Dubai's Amity University, told The National earlier this month that the move will 'significantly accelerate' the rocket's development. 'This substantial increase from the previous limit allows SpaceX to implement a rapid iterative testing campaign, quickly identifying and rectifying design or operational flaws through frequent flight data,' he said. 'Each launch provides invaluable real-world performance data crucial for refining the Starship system, including its novel full reusability aspects.' SpaceX has also used this rapid development approach for its flagship Falcon rockets, building and testing them quickly to gather data and make improvements. But frequent test flights of Starship have been a challenge due to strict requirements. On May 3, SpaceX's launch site Starbase became a city in Texas, after residents of the area, many of whom are SpaceX employees, voted in favour of Mr Musk's proposal. SpaceX's progress also comes as Nasa, which is US government-funded, faces budget cuts. The White House's proposed budget cuts cast doubt on Nasa projects such as the SLS rocket and Orion capsule, which would both be used to take astronauts to the Moon. Lin Kayser, co-founder of Dubai company Leap 71, which develops artificial intelligence models to generate rocket engines, said Starship could be the foundation of US ambitions of exploring deep space. 'With the future of Nasa's SLS and Orion uncertain due to rising costs and limited reusability, Starship is increasingly emerging as the de facto backbone of US launch infrastructure,' he said. 'SpaceX is already the primary launch provider for the US government and with Starship it becomes a near-monopoly at the high end of launch capability. That level of centralisation raises strategic concerns but it also highlights how far ahead SpaceX has pulled.'
Fox News
23-05-2025
- Science
- Fox News
RFK Jr. backtracks on timeline for determining cause of autism in CNN interview
All times eastern Making Money with Charles Payne FOX News Radio Live Channel Coverage WATCH LIVE: Undocking of NASA's SpaceX Dragon spacecraft from the International Space Station
