Insight sends its first images and makes us listen to the wind blowing on Mars

The Insight probe, which arrived on Mars on November 26, 2018, takes its time to unfold its arms, and reveals to us the landscape that surrounds it. After a first shot sent the day after his impeccable landing, his panoramic camera took a shot of the landscape and the probe, with in the foreground one of his two fan-shaped solar panels and the SEIS seismometer, designed at the IPGP, which is to be later placed on the Mars ground by the mechanical arm.

Ten days later engineers unveiled another glimpse of Mars: for the first time since human machines explored Mars, the sound of the wind blowing on its surface was recorded. The probe’s sensors have actually detected the vibrations emitted by the wind, which NASA engineers estimate to blow between 15 and 25 km/h from northwest to southeast. These hypotheses would be corroborated by the traces of dust visible in the area.

“We hadn’t planned to make these recordings, it’s a nice surprise,” said Bruce Banerdt, NASA’s InSight mission supervisor. “But one of the objectives of our mission is to measure motion on Mars, and of course this includes motion caused by sound waves. “The InSight probe works like a “giant ear” according to the American Space Agency, so there is a risk that in the future we will often hear the bewitching and disturbing sounds that animate the surface of Mars.