We all know what mars looks like close up: The burnt-orange, rubbled landscape is familiar, thanks to last year's Pathfinder spacecraft photographs. But who knows what a day on Mars sounds like? Well, soon it will be possible to hear the sounds of Mars.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), working with scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, is placing a microphone aboard the Surveyor '98 Lander spacecraft, scheduled to launch in January for Mars and due to arrive the following fall. Once on Mars, the microphone, which is the size of a matchbox, is expected to record wind, sandstorms and the crackle of electrical discharges in the atmosphere.