Nasa’s InSight lander ‘hears’ winds on Mars

TAMPA ( Florida): Humans can now hear the haunting, low rumble of wind on Mars for the first time, after Nasa’s InSight lander captured vibrations from the breeze on the Red Planet, the US space agency said.

The strong gusts of wind, blowing between 16 to 24kph, were captured as they moved over the solar panels on InSight, an unmanned lander that touched down on Earth’s dusty, desolate neighbour on Nov 26.

Two sensors picked up the vibrations: an air pressure sensor inside the lander and a seismometer on the lander’s deck, awaiting to be deployed to the surface by InSight’s robotic arm.

“This is the very first 15 minutes of data that have come from the short period seismometer,” said Thomas Pike, lead investigator at Imperial College London.

“It’s a little like a flag waving in the wind,” he added.

“It really sounds otherworldly, and that is exactly what it is.”

InSight is designed to study the interior of Mars like never before, using seismology instruments to detect quakes and a self-hammering mole to measure heat escape from the planet’s crust.

Nasa’s Viking 1 and 2 landers also picked up signals of the Martian wind when they landed in 1976.