The Red Planet's biggest hits have been condensed to a five-hour playlist of Perseverance's audio recordings on the Martian surface. Martian sounds are eerily quiet and allow you to explore the Martian environment in an entirely new way. Some of these theories have already been confirmed regarding how sound travels around the globe.

It was first reported that the rover's audio was not very pleasant to the ear, possibly due to electromagnetic interference. Last month, an analysis of the latest sounds on Mars and what they can reveal about how sound travels on Mars was published in Nature.

During a video call with Gizmodo last year, planetary scientist Baptiste Chide explained that audio heard on Mars would sound as if it were coming through a wall because the atmosphere on Mars is 1% as dense as Earth's. However, Chide was still surprised at just how quiet Mars was. In an Acoustical Society of America release, Chide said that the microphone was so quiet at one point that he thought it was broken.

Mars rover Perseverance landed on Mars in February 2021 with a suite of tools designed to find out whether Mars ever harbored microbial life in the ancient past. Besides the science instruments, the rover was equipped with two microphones, built from off-the-shelf parts, for recording the first audio data from Mars.

Perseverance has a microphone located just above one of its wheels on its frame. Martian dust, sucked up by the planet's winds, can be deadly to spacecraft, as the Opportunity rover learned so unnecessarily. The microphone is covered in mesh to protect it from Martian dust. The other microphone is attached to the rover's SuperCam -- one of the machine's main cameras, which sits on an arm above its frame.

Scientists found that the latter microphone picked up more sounds from the rover's activities, whereas the former picked up wind sounds. While the Ingenuity helicopter was over 300 feet away, the microphones successfully picked up the whine.

Chide and his team measured the speed of sound on Mars using the SuperCam microphone in March. Recent research employed both microphones to study Mars' acoustic environment, demonstrating how its carbon dioxide-heavy atmosphere affected sound travel.

Mars is colder and has a thinner atmosphere than Earth. NASA scientists predicted that sound would travel slower on Mars because of this, and they were right. Higher-frequency sounds travel faster than lower-frequency sounds, as well.

During the planet's 687-day year, Mars' sound will change. During Martian winter, carbon dioxide in its polar regions freezes, causing the loudness of sounds to fluctuate. Keep an eye out. Perseverance should result in a wider range of Martian mixes in the near future, as long as it operates as expected.