The Planetary Society Mars Microphone was selected to fly on the ultimately cancelled CNES Mars Netlander missions. The Society, including the creator of the Mars Microphone, Dr. Greg Delory of UC Berkeley, worked with the acoustic sensor on Cassini-Huygens to turn science data into sound for the public from Titan in 2005, "hearing" the wind sound of descent through the atmosphere. In 2007, The Planetary Society partnered with Malin Space Science Systems on their microphone in the Phoenix descent imager. This second microphone to fly to Mars, on Phoenix, was never turned on because of the potential for an electronic problem.

Mars remained silent. Well, really, it was really more of a question of if a dust devil moves over your spacecraft on Mars, but no microphone is there to hear it…well, you get the idea. The Planetary Society alone or with partners tried to get microphones on every lander that has gone to Mars since Mars Polar Lander. Some were detailed proposals and technical studies; some were quick rejections. None were scrapped due to technical flaws. So why has it been so hard to fly microphones to Mars?

The gist of the challenge has been convincing space agencies that microphones are worth the resources in terms of time, mass, data, and added complexity. Microphones have trouble competing with other instruments on a science or engineering basis alone, which is often the determining factor for what flies and what doesn’t. Microphones have come close to flying again before now, but in the end, each mission team has not wanted one more thing to think about among the rest of their engineering challenges. I go into more detail about this in a Q and A piece just came out in Astronomy magazine on why microphones are hard to get on Mars missions.

What is Flying on Mars 2020?

The SuperCam microphone ties specifically into their science. SuperCam, the follow-on to ChemCam on Curiosity, uses Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS)—vaporizing rock with a laser and analyzing the spectral result to determine composition of the rock. Its microphone can enhance their science, since testing on Earth indicates that analysis of the volume of the sound (kind of a crack or loud pop) can be used to study the mass of material vaporized by a laser shot. You can find more details in our previous blog post about this microphone having been proposed.

It also should be able to detect other sounds of science, engineering, and public interest, from blowing winds to the crunch of the wheels rolling across the surface. The Planetary Society has been working with the SuperCam team and discussing possible ways to collaborate with their microphone. We’ll be bringing you more details on the SuperCam microphone in the future.