SuperCam Can Hear Hardness

Perseverance carries several microphones, which will pick up the sound of Martian wind, rover activities, and in the case of SuperCam, the sound of rock being vaporized. Supercam's laser zaps a rock and then a spectrometer analyzes the resulting puff of plasma to identify the composition. The sound produced when the rock is hit with the laser is related to how hard the rock is, giving clues to its formation. The microphone is circled in red in this image of SuperCam's engineering model. The microphone can record for short bursts or for periods of a few minutes at a time, and it will record the sound of the rover driving and other activities.