Sounds a bit like a rockfall to me, perhaps nearby? The slow buildup and slower subsidence of the sound intuitively fits what I would expect for a rockfall, and also we know there are rockfalls on the surface of Mars. It would be neat if that could be corroborated with surface evidence of a rockfall (I think a few have even been captured by satellite!)

Impulsive quakes on Earth have a characteristic waveform which this does not match: The arrival of a compression wave, followed by a larger shear wave. That waveform wouldn't be much different on another planet, since the shape of the waveform arises from the mechanical properties of rock. If it were not a rockfall, it would have to correspond more to a seismic tremor, which happens more slowly-- I know less about those and I am curious how this matches up.

Having multiple stations would really help to narrow down what the source of sounds like this could be.

There is no audio on mars, so they generated the sound.

This is recorded from vibrations in rock, not in air. There is some sound in the very thin Martian atmosphere, and there is plenty of sound in the Martian crust.

The article states definitively that Mars does not have tectonic plates. This is news to me because hitherto I thought there is no evidence either way.

Plate Tectonics seems to require water , lots of water.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001AGUFM.U21A..09S

Much like the Mars probes, the pre-2014 MATLAB color scheme is certainly an staunch survivor!

Come on, like Nasa isn't going to use the Jet color scheme ...

Pedantry: "audio of first likely 'quake' on Mars" is unlikely. But "first likely audio of a 'quake' on Mars", sure.

Or "audio of first likey 'quake' on Mars (recorded by this sensor)"

Sure. But that's not in the title.

"In contrast, Earth’s surface is quivering constantly from seismic noise created by oceans and weather."

Fascinating, I wouldn't have thought these would be measurable on a large area's scale.

This omnipresent seismic noise is also a big challenge for building terrestrial gravitational wave detectors like LIGO. Even though the noise is "only" a bunch micrometers of movement, they had to deploy multiple levels of noise suppression to be able to measure gravitational waves: https://youtu.be/j4gE-hSQm68?t=1380

Interesting, I didn't know that quakes could still occur without tectonic activity. The explanation makes sense, but I had just never thought about it.

Marsquake.