ISAE-SUPAERO’s student project: a martian microphone for NASA

Two second year students of ISAE-SUPAERO, Julien Delpeyrat and Elisa Clavé are performing tests on the Mars Microphone, the first ever microphone that will be recording sounds on the Mars surface.

This microphone engineering model will be integrated in the SuperCam payload, before being integrated into the Mars 2020 rover engineering model, currently being designed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory(JPL) in NASA for the Mars 2020 project.

The Mars microphone is the result of a collaboration between the department DEOS (team: Space systems for the Planetology and its Application) at ISAE-SUPAERO, IRAP (Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique) and the French Space Agency, CNES, in charge of SuperCam delivery to NASA.

The SuperCam instrument is an improved version of ChemCam, already implemented on the rover Curiosity. Supercam development is led by IRAP and the Los Alamos National Laboratory for studying the geologic diversity of the red planet.

These experimental tests are a part of the project "Innovation-Research" at the ISAE-SUPAERO which help students acquire a first hand experience in the field of research while keeping intact their spirit of innovation and development.