NASA Releases Hi-Res Video, Audio Of Mars Helicopter Flying Across Red Planet

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has achieved yet another first after capturing the sounds of another spacecraft hovering on the red planet. Using the microphone on its rock-zapping SuperCam instrument, the six-wheeled robot listened to the sounds of the Ingenuity helicopter on April 30 and recorded the whirring of its fast-spinning rotors. This marked the first time a spacecraft has recorded audio of another probe on a world beyond Earth. This was the chopper's fourth flight since Perseverance and Ingenuity landed together on Feb. 18 on the floor of Mars' Jezero Crater, NASA said in a statement. A video recently released by NASA combined the footage from Perseverance's Mastcam-Z imager of the solar-powered helicopter with the recorded audio, allowing scientists to know how the robot is performing just by tuning in to the sound it makes.