NASA Released a Sound Clip of Meteoroid Impacts from Insight Lander on Mars for the First Time

NASA's InSight lander recorded a "bloop" sound representing the meteoroids that struck Mars. According to the report published in Nature Geoscience, the captured sound happened between 2020 and 2021.

NASA Insight Lander Captured Sound

According to NASA, this is the first time seismic and acoustic waves from an impact have been detected on Mars. It represents the first impact identified by the spacecraft's seismometer since it touched down on the Red Planet in 2018.

The seismometer recorded four meteoroid impacts on Mars between 53 and 180 miles (85 and 290 kilometers) from InSight's location. All four produced marsquakes in the 2.0 magnitude range.

On Sep. 5, 2021, the first of the four confirmed meteoroids entered Mars' atmosphere and exploded into at least three shards, each of which left a crater behind. Scientists discovered three further events had taken place on May 27, 2020; February 18, 2021; and Aug. 31, 2021, after examining previous data.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory posted on its Facebook page a sound clip of a meteoroid striking Mars.

Impact's Site Position on the Red Planet

The impact site's position was then verified by a flight by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter over the area. Three darkened areas on the surface were revealed in black-and-white by the orbiter's Context Camera.

The team behind the orbiter found these sites and then used the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, or HiRISE, to obtain a close-up color photograph of the craters. The agency thought that more craters might have been left on the surface, but they would have been too small to be seen in HiRISE's images.

"After three years of InSight waiting to detect an impact, those craters looked magnificent," according to co-author of the study and expert on Mars impacts, Ingrid Daubar of Brown University.

(Photo : Martin/Wikimedia Commons)
Mars Insight Lander Assembly

NASA Insight Lander Captured Sound

Impact's Site Position on the Red Planet

The team behind the orbiter found these sites and then used the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, or HiRISE, to obtain a close-up color photograph of the craters. The agency thought that more craters may have been left on the surface, but they would have been too small to be seen in HiRISE's images.

According to co-author of the study and expert on Mars impacts Ingrid Daubar of Brown University, "After three years of InSight waiting to detect an impact, those craters looked magnificent."

Marsquakes and Collisions

The seismometer on InSight has picked up more than 1,300 marsquakes. The sensor, supplied by the Centre National d'Études Spatiales of France's space agency, is so sensitive that it can pick up seismic waves thousands of kilometers away. However, the event captured on Sep. 5, 2021 showed that the cause of the waves was the identified impact for the first time.

Yet, the small number of meteoroid collisions on Mars has baffled researchers. Take note that the primary asteroid belt of the solar system is just next to the Red Planet, which means there are enough space rocks nearby to scour the planet's surface. More meteoroids pass through Mars' atmosphere unharmed since it is only 1% as thick as Earth's.

The InSight team speculates that other consequences might have been hidden by wind noise or seasonal atmospheric shifts. But now that the particular seismic signature of a Mars impact has been identified, researchers anticipate finding more from the InSight data.

So far, the four confirmed meteoroid impacts have resulted in mild quakes with magnitudes of little more than 2.0. These small quakes give scientists a view into the Martian crust.

On the other hand, seismic signals from larger quakes, like the magnitude 5.0 that happened in May 2022, provide information about the planet's mantle and core.