We have seen other worlds. We have touched other worlds through our robot surrogates. Now, we will hear another world after The Planetary Society's Mars Microphone makes landfall December 3, 1999 aboard the Mars Polar Lander near the Martian south pole.
These first sounds of Mars will be heard not only by scientists and engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but also by the general public at The Planetary Society's festival of space exploration, Planetfest '99, at the Pasadena Center, and at Planetfest Online, accessible through the Society's website.
That is just as it should be for a science instrument paid for by donations from the members of The Planetary Society. It is the first instrument ever funded by a public interest organization to fly on a planetary mission.
The Mars Microphone was developed by the University of California Space Science Lab for The Planetary Society. It sits on board the Mars Polar Lander within the LIDAR instrument built by the Russian Space Research Institute (IKI). The LIDAR is the first Russian instrument to fly aboard a US planetary mission.
"Even if only a few minutes of Martian sounds are recorded from this first experiment, the public interest will be high and the opportunity for scientific exploration real," wrote the late Carl Sagan in a letter to NASA. Sagan was a co-founder of The Planetary Society and its President until his death.
The Mars Microphone may record whatever sounds there are on Mars, such as wind, dust and electrical discharges in the Martian atmosphere as well as noises of the spacecraft itself. The microphone can be triggered randomly by naturally occurring sounds or it can be programmed to listen to specific lander actions, such as when the arm digs in the soil.
"Imagine listening to the sounds of an alien world!" said Louis Friedman, "This will be an extraordinary moment. A gust of wind, the abrasion of dust — we will hear Mars as if we ourselves were standing there on the surface of the planet."
The UC Berkeley team of Janet Luhmann, Dave Curtis and Greg Delory are responsible for the Mars Microphone. The Mars Microphone was constructed largely of off-the-shelf parts, including a microphone similar to those in hearing aids and a microprocessor chip used in speech recognition devices.
The microphone uses Sensory, Inc's RSC-164 IC chip, the most popular IC for speech recognition in consumer electronics. The microphone comes from a long line of miniaturized, robust devices, several of which were used for astronaut communications during the Apollo moon landings.
The Russian LIDAR is designed to examine the existence of dust and aerosols in the atmosphere. Principal Investigators of the LIDAR experiment are Viacheslav Linkin and Alexander Lipatov of IKI. This experiment works by scattering laser light off of the surrounding dust cloud and detecting the returned scattered light.
Planetfest '99 will be a celebration the whole family can enjoy, with hands-on activities in a Child's universe, speakers, space exhibits, a film festival, and holiday shopping at the Space Emporium.
Major sponsors for Planetfest '99 include Touchstone Pictures' "Mission to Mars", Oldsmobile, Intel Corporation, Cisco Systems, Inc. and LEGO. Intel Corporation will use its Streaming Web Video software during Planetfest Online to bring high-quality sights and sounds from Mars.
Additional sponsors include Earthlink, OCE Office Systems, the Norris Foundation, Swales Aerospace, Raytheon, Discovery Channel, Sky Publishing, David Brown and Abe Gomel of The Planetary Society's New Millennium Committee, International Services, Radio Shack, Employee Community Fund of the Boeing Company, Epson, StarLab, Minotaur Amusements, Meade Telescope, Motorola, MBNA, Mars Inc., Sonic Foundry Inc., U-Haul, Community Bank, Costco Wholesale, Smart & Final, and Steve's InFocus Photo Lab and Portrait Studio.
For tickets to Planetfest '99 or further information about the events there, call toll free 1-877-PLANETS.
