Listen to the eerie sound of a boom on board ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) spacecraft deploying in space during commissioning of the spacecraft in May 2023.

 

Tip: use headphones or surround speakers for the best experience – the forward and backward wobbles of the boom come through the left and right channels.

 

The vibration signal used to create the sound came from the accelerometer on board the main body of the spacecraft, which was switched on to monitor the reaction of the spacecraft to the boom’s deployment.

 

The larger the vibration measured by the accelerometer, the louder the sound in the sonification. We can imagine the boom like a human arm initially folded into the body; the first higher-pitched ‘ring’ that you hear is the elbow opening and the second lower-pitched ring is the shoulder stretching up.

 

Though the accelerometer measurements were not mandatory to validate the deployment, the engineers working on Juice were happy to see that they are very accurate. Turning the vibration signal into sound may help us understand the mechanics of the deployment.

 

The boom is one of four 'Langmuir probes' that are part of Juice's Radio & Plasma Wave Investigation experiment. These probes will provide crucial information on the electric fields and plasma environment around Jupiter's moons.

 

The sonification was prepared by Johannes Z. D. Mieth (TU Braunschweig) and Willi Exner (ESA).

 

#ESAJuice #Jupiter #ESA #EuropeanSpaceAgency

Sound of a Juice boom deploying

Astrobites turns 100! For our ten squared-th episode we take a tour of all of the extremes of astrophysics: the heaviest and the lightest, the fastest and the slowest, the brightest and dimmest. In doing so, Shashank covers an astrobite on itty bitty particles that pack a big punch, Lucia talks about medium-ish galaxies and their black hole hearts, and Cormac panics about the danger of violent kilonovae. To help us celebrate, we meet up with some old friends to discuss dark matter, exoplanets, and how ridiculously long a Ph.D. takes. 
Astrobites:
https://astrobites.org/2024/06/06/agns-quenching-dwarf-galaxies/
https://astrobites.org/2013/06/04/cosmic-rays-from-the-telescope-array/
https://astrobites.org/2023/11/20/kilonova-safety/
https://astrobites.org/2018/08/16/do_the_milky_ways_stellar_streams_have_that_fuzzy_dark_matter_feeling/
https://astrobites.org/2022/11/28/evaporating-exoplanet/
Space sound:
http://soundcloud.com/alexhp-1/supernova-sonata
MIT study on children thinking logarithmically:
https://news.mit.edu/2012/thinking-logarithmically-1005#:~:text=Cognitive%20scientists%20theorize%20that%20that's,is%2031%2C%20or%203.

Episode 100: Be There or Be Ten Squared

The only thing better than studying the largest compact objects in the universe is smashing them together. In this episode, Lucia, Shashank, and Cole cover binary black hole mergers and what these violent events can tell us about our universe! Lucia talks us through some mergers' specific spins and Cole forces Shashank to talk about cosmology again. 

Astrobites:
https://astrobites.org/2025/06/27/pisngap_gws_flexible_models/

https://astrobites.org/2025/07/17/lss-bbhgw-expansionrate/




Space Sound:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/multimedia/sonifications/

Episode 111: Mergers for Nothing and Your Chirps for Free

Astrobites for your ears. Three grad students bring you cutting-edge research findings in astronomy and connect the dots between diverse subfields.

Episode 111: Mergers for Nothing and Your Chirps for Free

astro[sound]bites

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