Why does curiosity have speakers

Viewed 3k times. Improve this question. There are plenty of youtube videos where music is played by floppy disk drives, drills, or other noisy devices containing electric motors. Like a deaf piano player. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes.

Improve this answer. Chad Chad 7 7 silver badges 16 16 bronze badges. Community Bot 1. I love it when NASA nerds do cool stuff like this for fun. Some are piezoelectric, some are simply off-set motors with speed determining frequency. And some are spark-gap air exciters. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name. For more information on the categories of personal information we collect and the purposes we use them for, please view our Notice at Collection.

Become a Member Sign In. General Newsletters Got a news tip? Free: Join the VentureBeat Community for access to 3 premium posts and unlimited videos per month. Learn More. Microphone on SuperCam SuperCam identifies minerals and rock compositions, and it seeks organic compounds that could be related to past life on Mars.

It has a laser that can zap and study areas on a rock as small as the period at the end of this sentence. All from about 20 feet, or 7 meters away. Its camera and spectrometers then examine the rock's chemistry. The microphone on SuperCam gives scientists another "sense" with which to probe the rock targets they are studying. Or to listen to wind and for rover sounds for about 3. Weight 30 grams, or about 1 ounce What it can hear the staccato pop caused when the laser studies rock, wind, and rover noises.

Hearing the Sounds of a Laser Firing When SuperCam fires a laser at a rock, a small amount of the rock vaporizes into a hot gas called "plasma", and heat and vibration creates a shockwave that makes a popping sound. At the same time, the microphone hears the staccato "pop" as the laser strikes rock several feet away from Perseverance. SuperCam can listen for about 3.

This gives the rover the chance to hear the sounds of Mars, such as the high-pitched sound of sand grains over the surface, the wind whistling around the rover mast, and low-pitched howls of dust devils passing by. The microphone also records sounds of Perseverance using its arm, coring rocks, and the wheels crunching against the surface.

The rover may hear the other instruments, internal mechanisms, and hear when we drop off the sample tubes.