2427: Perseverance Microphones
| Perseverance Microphones |
 Title text: If the first audio they downlink is from the descent, we probably won't be able to hear anything over the sound of the rover screaming. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a MARS ROVER. Explanation of the title text is missing. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks. |
A pun. NASA had landed a new rover, Perseverance, on Mars the previous day; part of its mission is to collect scientific samples which will hopefully eventually be returned to Earth. “Samples” can also refer to short snippets of music, as well as individual packets from data logs.
You can view the landing here.
Transcript
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This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks. |
- [Megan is sitting at a desk, typing on her laptop, which is connected to an audio mixer on the floor.]
- Megan: Perseverance's microphones are active! Downlinking audio!
- [Cueball is standing on the other side of the box, holding an electric guitar, which is plugged into the box, and standing with one foot on a small box on the floor, which is also connected.]
- Cueball: I'm ready with the looper pedal.
- [Caption below the panel:]
- The first Mars sample return
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refresh comments!Discussion
Thank you, Galaktos, for the explanation. I knew all the events and words already, but you put them together for me so that Randall's intent became clearer to me. Kudos. JohnB (talk) 22:26, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
- I mean, I just thought I’d write a first version and later someone would rewrite it, but apparently it’s been good enough so far :D --Galaktos (talk) 22:48, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
- I read it through several times utterly happy with how I found it, but decided to add a little bit about the actual Terror. It ended up less snappy, unfortunately. Hope it doesn't smother the rest. 141.101.105.134 00:24, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
- I've added a little bit about the audio. I'm not sure there's much more to add to this, given it's a (well-executed) one shot joke and there's content elsewhere about Mars Rovers etc?
None of the explanations for screaming look very believable to me, yet we made up a lot of them. There are other explanations where, if you have the relevant experience, it's very obvious that the explainer made their explanation up. I wonder if it would be good to have a way to indicate in-article that a part of the joke didn't actually strike home for any of the editors so far, and there might be a domain of expertise missing in the authorship. 162.158.63.196 21:29, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
- Yeah, I don't think the electric guitar/feedback explanation is right. "Squealing" or "squawking" are the normal terms, not screaming. I read the title text as being analogous to someone screaming on a roller coaster. This would be the rover's first ever descent, it would be scary, it would scream. Stevage (talk) 09:21, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
- A NASA lady speaking to BBC radio said that they do have audio of the probe "screaming" down to the ground, so either this simply is what happens, or she reads this comic - and maybe even these words? Hi, ma'am! Congratulations on hitting the ground not too hard! Robert Carnegie [email protected] 162.158.155.132 09:57, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
"The round-trip communication delay significantly exceeds" ... The descend took 7 minutes, the delay was 11 minutes (would be 22 in both directions). Not THAT much exceeding ... of course, not usable for steering. -- Hkmaly (talk) 01:27, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
- If it takes three times the time to react to something than the whole duration of the something one might wish to react to, I say that's significantly exceeding. (More so given it's probably the later minutes or even the last few seconds where intervention might have been most needed. Though wasn't.)
- It also makes you wonder if manned descents will ever be as with Armstrong in the Eagle or just "spam in a can" where the human payload is told to stay hands off whatever controls they think they can use. I really doubt (unlike in Ad Astra) it'll ever be more practical to have a piloted entry. Not in a tail-first-with-suicide-burn landing, anyway. A 'descent-plane' maybe, with Shuttle-like glider/semi-glider landing, but even then the Russians had a 100% record (one of one!) landing Buran without a pilot, and martian flight is obviously a trickier thing to train for. (Maybe design for... Ingenuity is yet to do its own thing for real..) 141.101.98.36 16:14, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
The intro refers to a play on words on "sample" and "return". Now, "sample" is covered (a specimen of soil/rock vs a short clip of music). What are the two meanings of "return"? Stevage (talk) 09:22, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
FIFY 162.158.74.97 11:35, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
Here's some more information about Perserverance's Microphones and here is a link to some of the sound recordings that are available. --WhiteDragon (talk) 16:30, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
Has anyone actually done this yet?
I was surprised to find that the discussion didn't include any links to any actual techno music that fans have made using the audio from the rover. --WhiteDragon (talk) 16:30, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
