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Detection of triboelectric discharges during dust events on Mars

gizmodo.com

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Re: Detection of triboelectric discharges during dust events on Mars

#41

Post by Sharlin »

chistev wrote: post #28
wongarsu wrote: post #11

This discovery is thanks to Perseverance having microphones. It's crazy to think about that 2021 was the first time we had working microphones on Mars. The first Mars Microphone was originally supposed to land in 1999 on the Polar Lander, but that one didn't survive the landing. The next was in 2008 on Phoenix 's Mars Descent Imager, but in integration testing a bug was discovered that made the Descent Imager risky t…

How does this work in practice. If a microphone is up there, it's constantly listening for things right? So how do humans here on Earth go over it to know if a sound was picked up knowing there's hours of recording? Is it that the whole system is programmed to show a spike when sound is captured?

Well, there are these things called computers, and they’re really very good at this stuff. It’s not exactly rocket science (heh) to write a program to listen to an audio stream and mark and log every occurence of something else than background noise and ambient wind sounds (if Martian winds are even loud enough to make sound). Everything else that the rover has to do automatically is way more complicated.

It’s pretty likely that the entire stream of silence isn’t being stored, or sent to Earth, only the interesting parts. There isn’t any way for people to listen in real time anyway, because communications (can) only happen at specific times of the day. Every interplanetary mission works by sending a preplanned sequence of commands one day, then coming back the next day to see what the probe/rover/whatever sent back, then planning the next set of commands, and so on.

Re: Detection of triboelectric discharges during dust events on Mars

#42

Post by TeMPOraL »

bobmcnamara wrote: post #40
chistev wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this work in practice. If a microphone is up there, it's constantly listening for things right? So how do humans here on Earth go over it to know if a sound was picked up knowing there's hours of recording? Is it that the whole system is programmed to show a spike when sound is captured?

If you have enough RAM, start with a ring buffer. On interesting event: compress and transfer the relevant chunk of audio from the ring buffer back to Earth. Interesting event trigger ideas: 1) loud sound after quiet time 2) manual timestamp request from control 3) video clip recording 4) midnight, sunrise, noon, sunset. These are mostly so you have some daily baseline. 5) science package running 6) rover moving 7) a…

I'd add:

8) Quiet but above-noise sound persisting for some time (might be worth checking out and then adjusting the cutoff level up, if it turns out to be more wind)

9) Complete silence (possibly malfunction) or sound levels dropping far below expected background (weird).

Re: Detection of triboelectric discharges during dust events on Mars

#43

Post by PunchyHamster »

wongarsu wrote: post #11

This discovery is thanks to Perseverance having microphones. It's crazy to think about that 2021 was the first time we had working microphones on Mars. The first Mars Microphone was originally supposed to land in 1999 on the Polar Lander, but that one didn't survive the landing. The next was in 2008 on Phoenix 's Mars Descent Imager, but in integration testing a bug was discovered that made the Descent Imager risky t…

it's wild given how small and light basic microphone is. They even (probably not in 1999 tho) come with their own adc and serial interface now.

Then again I guess there isn't any obvious need for it aside from PR points for "listening to mars"

Re: Detection of triboelectric discharges during dust events on Mars

#44

Post by moron4hire »

yesco wrote: post #37
irjustin wrote: post #32

This isn't lightning like we think on earth. It's only a few centimeters long which is why it's never been detected before except by microphone[0]. [0] https://www.kpbs.org/news/science-technology/2025/11/26/at-l...

Wouldn't it be static electricity in that case and not lightning? Not sure if this is just a technical definition thing I'm missing or if lightning just makes a cooler sounding headline.

Lightning is static electricity that builds in an atmosphere.

Re: Detection of triboelectric discharges during dust events on Mars

#45

Post by foobarbecue »

wongarsu wrote: post #11

This discovery is thanks to Perseverance having microphones. It's crazy to think about that 2021 was the first time we had working microphones on Mars. The first Mars Microphone was originally supposed to land in 1999 on the Polar Lander, but that one didn't survive the landing. The next was in 2008 on Phoenix 's Mars Descent Imager, but in integration testing a bug was discovered that made the Descent Imager risky t…

> The first Mars Microphone was originally supposed to land in 1999 on the Polar Lander, but that one didn't survive the landing.

This could be misread to mean that Mars Polar Lander landed but the microphones didn't survive. Mars Polar Lander crashed and was presumed completely destroyed on impact. Last I heard, we still haven't found the crash site in orbital imagery.

Re: Detection of triboelectric discharges during dust events on Mars

#47

Post by foobarbecue »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #43
wongarsu wrote: post #11

This discovery is thanks to Perseverance having microphones. It's crazy to think about that 2021 was the first time we had working microphones on Mars. The first Mars Microphone was originally supposed to land in 1999 on the Polar Lander, but that one didn't survive the landing. The next was in 2008 on Phoenix 's Mars Descent Imager, but in integration testing a bug was discovered that made the Descent Imager risky t…

it's wild given how small and light basic microphone is. They even (probably not in 1999 tho) come with their own adc and serial interface now. Then again I guess there isn't any obvious need for it aside from PR points for "listening to mars"

Yes, and don't forget that you need to modify & certify it to work in 1% of Earth atmospheric pressure and down to -75C, and get it integrated into flight software running on a RAD750.

Re: Detection of triboelectric discharges during dust events on Mars

#49

Post by tsimionescu »

amelius wrote: post #22

Strange that the article doesn't say what this means for the formation of life.

Does it mean anything? There are some theories that lightning could be involved in abiogenesis on Earth, but it's not in any way a clear thing.

Re: Detection of triboelectric discharges during dust events on Mars

#50

Post by zamadatix »

moron4hire wrote: post #44
yesco wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be static electricity in that case and not lightning? Not sure if this is just a technical definition thing I'm missing or if lightning just makes a cooler sounding headline.

Lightning is static electricity that builds in an atmosphere.

And a mountain is a bump on the ground. It does feel like "lightning" comes with context beyond how the charge was formed, even if it could be technically correct to say that's all it is. Of course almost nobody knows what triboelectric discharge is either, but sticking to "static electricity" fits well between the two.
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