On Sept. 5, 2021, NASA’s InSight lander “heard” the impact of an asteroid slamming into the surface of Mars — in fact the space rock broke into three pieces, each hitting the planet and creating a crater. Not only that, but it also detected the acoustic waves generated by the asteroid as it rammed through the thin air of Mars too! It gets better: The HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (or MRO) found the craters left behind by the impactor . All four events were translated into sound, so you can actually hear it. Listen: Spooky, and cool. The three impacts were felt by the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure , or SEIS, a seismometer lowered to the Martian surface shortly after InSight landed in 2018 . It’s detected thousands of marsquakes since then, including some big ones. But acoustic (sound) waves travel through the air as well, and can be detected by SEIS as they pass. The first sound is the asteroid passing through the air.…