INDUSTRY NEWS

Martian soundtrack

If there is life on Mars, what does it talk about? Curious earthlings will get a chance to find out for the first time this December when NASA's Mars Polar Lander is scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet. The satellite contains a specially designed microphone incorporating an IC that can generate and recognize speech as well as record sounds. Developed by Sensory of Sunnyvale, CA, the RSC-164 device has been used in voice-recognition light switches, toys, and cellular phones. It is made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., the largest IC foundry in the world, or at least the only world known to exist by evolved, bipedal carbon-based life-forms.

Janet Luhmann of UC Berkeley's Space Science Laboratory says the microphone project team she oversees nearly scuttled the idea of recording sounds on Mars "until we heard about this new technology." The device has the needed processing power, memory, and audio data conversion capabilities, and it meets the satellite's "stringent size and weight specifications."

The recordings from Mars will be made in 10-second bursts and sent to the Berkeley team for on-line posting at http://www.plasma2.ssl.berkeley.edu/marsmic/. The scientists speculate that sound on the Martian surface is similar to that of Earth. The sound should be fainter, though, because of the thinner atmosphere. Or maybe because Martians lack conversational skills.

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