The US space agency NASA has released the first audio from Mars captured by its Perseverance rover. The 60-second recording captured a faint crackling of a gust of wind on the Martian surface. The US space agency shared the recording on social media. 

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“Now that you’ve seen Mars, hear it,” it tweeted.

A microphone did not work during the rover’s descent to the surface, but it was able to capture audio once it landed on Mars, reported news agency AFP.

“What you hear there 10 seconds in is an actual wind gust on the surface of Mars picked up by the microphone and sent back to us here on Earth,” said Dave Gruel, lead engineer for the camera and microphone system on Perseverance.

The space agency has also released the first video of last week’s landing of the rover.

The high-definition video clip, lasting three minutes and 25 seconds, shows the deployment of a red-and-white parachute with a 70.5-foot-wide (21.5-meter-wide) canopy.

It shows the heat shield dropping away after protecting Perseverance during its entry into the Martian atmosphere and the rover’s touchdown in a cloud of dust in the Jezero Crater just north of the Red Planet’s equator.

“This is the first time we’ve ever been able to capture an event like the landing on Mars,” said Michael Watkins, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managing the mission, according to AFP.

“These are really amazing videos,” Watkins said. “We binge-watched them all weekend,” he added.

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Perseverance was launched on July 30, 2020 and landed on the surface of Mars on Thursday. It’s on a mission to search for signs of past life on the Red Planet.