The mic would be scientifically focused, and it would sit in an instrument called SuperCam to help study what happens to rocks when they get zapped with a laser. NASA was, coincidentally, on a very similar wavelength. Mars 2020-the official name for the mission that includes the Perseverance rover-would indeed include a mic. Mezilis studied how the analog-to-digital converter should be designed, what sort of sensitivity the device should possess, which parts should be mounted on the outside of the vehicle and which could be protected inside, what sort of testing and calibrations would be needed, how the final recordings would need to be processed.Ī few months into his research, however, Mezilis received a note from Carsten. The microphone would need to survive the launch and the seven-month journey to Mars, along with the 120-degree heat swings on the planet itself. “The first time you can tell when your car or your refrigerator is acting up is when you hear something wonky.” He then tackled the engineering challenges. “We take for granted how often sound is used in our latent perceptions,” he says. “Besides,” says David Gruel, the Perseverance assembly, test, and launch operations manager at JPL, who oversaw the microphone effort, “in the space business we don't do a lot with microphones and sound, since most of our research is done in a vacuum.”Īs he built his pitch, Mezilis focused on reasons NASA might consider a mic on Perseverance: public outreach potential, for one, giving space science fans something new to latch onto and it could be a diagnostic tool for the rover, even an early warning system for mechanical faults. Every extra ounce on a vehicle requires additional fuel at takeoff and landing, and saps precious electrical power during the mission. What was clear, though, was that space acoustics haven’t been a priority. Now, Mezilis began to read up on how they might be used in space: Carl Sagan had championed the concept decades earlier, and there were those NASA and Soviet efforts. As an audio engineer, he had a broad knowledge of microphones.
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