Submissions to Call from Mars competition

Map showing countries from where people submitted sound recordings for the Call from Mars project, darker red colours denotes more entries received.

Eleven finalists have been chosen to have their recordings sent to the Red Planet on the ExoMars 2020 mission.

The joint ESA-Roscosmos mission will investigate, among other things, signs of lightning on Mars using a scientific instrument mounted on the Kazachok surface platform.

Before the Czech-made electromagnetic wave analyser, that is part of the MAIGRET instrument mounted on the platform, can begin its search for possible lightning discharges on Mars, it must first be calibrated. To do this, it will broadcast a recording back to mission control.

The 11 sounds were chosen by an international jury and will be stored on a memory chip to travel to Mars inside the Kazachok landing platform.

“We selected messages that can represent humankind,’ said Eva Zažímalová, President of the Czech Academy of Sciences and member of the eight-person jury.

“The submissions were often moving and entertaining,” adds Jorge Vago, ExoMars Project Scientist and jury member, “narrowing down our selection to just 11 was a challenge but that is all we had room for on the instruments memory.”