A lander on Mars sent sounds back to earth. Whoooosshhh. What was that? The wind? No, it came from the planet’s surface. NASA's InSight lander recorded rumblings in the ground of the Red Planet. It was not an earthquake. It was a “marsquake”!

Scientists put the audio online so people could listen to it. But they had to turn it way up so the human ear could hear the sounds.

NASA’s InSight landed on Mars last November, and recorded its first seismic rumbling in April. The sensor on the lander is called a “seismometer.” It is designed to record shaking in the ground. The sensor detected more than 100 events. Of those, 21 might be marsquakes. 

The lander’s equipment is so sensitive it can hear everything happening around the device. That includes the Martian wind, movements by the lander's robot arm, and other mechanical "dinks and donks, " as the NASA team calls them.

Mars’ surface is very quiet. This is why the lander can hear small rumblings. Earth is noisy. Oceans, weather, cars, and crowds make the ground shake. If the lander sat on the street here, it never would have heard the small rumbling that it heard on Mars.

"It's been exciting, especially in the beginning, hearing the first vibrations from the lander," says Constantine, a technician who helped with the audio recordings. "You're imagining what's really happening on Mars as InSight sits on the open landscape," he added.

What mysteries of God’s creation the heaven’s hold! Scientists hope recordings will help solve a few of them, like what kinds of rocks make up the center of Mars.