Before we send humans to Mars, we’re exploring the red planet with rovers. We talked a bit about Mars 2020, the next martian rover, in an earlier episode of this podcast. But I want to revisit that…

And that’s because NASA reached a critical milestone in the development of the rover. They’re moving to the final phase of design, and we’re getting more details on the science equipment on board. And you know what’s really cool? Engineers are slapping a microphone on Mars 2020. We’re going to hear what the surface of Mars sounds like.

The Mars 2020 rover uses the ‘sky crane’ technique to land on Mars. Take a look at how it works, thanks to the folks at National Geographic.

And here’s some video from Curiosity’s decent onto the red planet.