NASA has always been at the forefront of activities related to Mars. The American Space Agency has an enviable team of scientists who are experts in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. They have created the Curiosity rover, and it has rendered yeoman service for 3000 days. Powered by solar energy (a form of Renewable Energy), it has been exploring the Red planet's terrain and sending back images. NASA now plans to capture sound bites from the alien surface. Its Perseverance rover would do this. Once it lands on Mars in February, inbuilt microphones would activate and begin transmitting the sounds.

The atmosphere on Mars is unlike that on Earth. Obviously, there will be differences, and experts will study these. It will be interesting because the voice on Mars might sound abnormal, and it would not be easy to decipher them. NASA would be looking at the long-term requirement of colonization. Elon Musk is upbeat about human-crewed missions to the Moon and Mars. Right now, NASA would have to be content with picking up sounds of the rover landing and working on Mars. Then there would be noises like wind blowing and parachutes' deployment during landing apart from the sound of the rover's wheels as they move over the surface. An official of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says - "It is stunning all the science we can get with an instrument as simple as a microphone on Mars."

Sound bites from Mars will open up new areas of investigation.

The audio recording devices onboard Perseverance will add another dimension to the exploration of Mars.

It will cover the atmosphere of the planet and pick up the sound bites for analysis. NASA is hunting for signs of lifeforms, and recording the noises could spring some surprise. No one knows what would be the nature of the audio. Hence, there would be suspense, and ground control would be waiting to listen to the first signal that could point to the presence of some unknown entity.

NASA wants to send astronauts to Mars by 2033. CNN goes on to add that the Perseverance rover will hunt for signs of ancient life. There will also be the Ingenuity helicopter. It would be the first to fly on another planet. These will land on Mars on February 18. They will mean additional robots on the Red planet after Curiosity that has been there since 2012, and InSight since November 2018.

They have been working 24X7.

Robots are an integral part of the Mars mission

It will be crowded skies on Mars this February with three individual missions. These are Tianwen -1 of China, Hope of the UAE, and Perseverance of America. Curiosity and InSight are already on the planet and working on preset programs. The InSight mission would be there until December 2022. It has identified several Marsquakes, which means the planet is seismically active. The heat probe on InSight is unable to go deep within the surface to record the internal temperature. Scientists would have to redesign it because astronauts might have to dig through Martian soil searching for subsurface life.

Search for natural resources on Mars

NASAs Perseverance will record ambient sounds. The American Space Agency wants to determine if life in any form ever existed on Mars. The agency would also set in motion preparatory work for human exploration to the Red planet. The design of Perseverance is to search for signs of past microbial life. It will also drill the Martian soil and collect rock samples for further scientific studies. Natural resources are abundant on Mars, and all the countries would try to identify useful items. Obviously, robotics will play a major role in excavating natural resources and transporting them to Earth NASA has joined hands with ESA in the Mars Sample Return Program.
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