Chuck Hards wrote:
The sound of the wind on another world...wow. Which reminds me, were the Mars Sojourner audio files ever posted to a Web server? (Mr. Amabassador?)
As far as I know the only other planetary probe to carry an audio microphone was Russia's Mars 98 which (owing to a faulty launch vehicle) currently resides in some South American jungle.
I hope they were recording audio data when Huygens actually touched-down. I'd love to hear it 'crunch' onto the surface.
This morning's ESA news conference featured two sound files. One was the descent wind sound you referred to although I was a little disappointed that the sound of the on board pumps seemed to overwhelm the ambient sounds. Still, in a way, hearing the sounds of a probe over a billion kilometers away was kind of fun. I see that the edited version on ESA's site ( http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/huygens_alien_winds_descent.mp3 ) has the mechanical sounds edited out. The other was the sound of radar echoes returning to Huygens ( http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/huygens_alien_winds_descent_radar.mp3 ). Not really the sound of Titan but hearing the pitch go up as they approached the surface was fascinating. Cheers! Patrick