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The joint ESA/Jaxa BepiColombo mission flew past Mercury for the first time on 1 October 2021, capturing data with the magnetometer onboard ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter. A sonification of the magnetic field data is presented here.  
 
Two synthesizers can be heard, which are controlled by three characteristics of the magnetic field. The first synthesizer's pitch represents the slowly changing magnitude of the background magnetic field. First the solar wind is heard, then the increase and decrease of the planetary magnetic field, and then the solar wind again. The lower the pitch, the more intense the magnetic field. 
 
The pitch of the second synthesizer is controlled by the variations of the magnetic field magnitude. A more turbulent magnetic field is represented by a faster change in pitch. The magnetosheath crossing after closest approach is very prominent. 
 
Using the amplitude envelope as a control for the volume of the second synthesizer emphasises the different magnetospheric regions.
 
Full story 
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/BepiColombo/BepiColombo_s_first_tastes_of_Mercury_science

Credit: ESA/BepiColombo/MPO-MAG/IGEP-IWF-IC-ISAS

Image credit: ESA/ATG medialab

Sound of the solar wind at Mercury

Collapsosaurus Rex - The Myth Of The Human Cockroach

Costa Rica's rainforests are lively and active at night, even if it might not seem like it. A night walk in the jungle will reveal countless creatures going about their business - hunting or trying to avoid hunters, looking for food and sometimes searching for a mate. Longer version at https://youtu.be/hl7LaTWnDYA

Night in the jungles of Costa Rica

In this episode of Talking Experiments, host Jennifer Torrence chats to composer Catherine Lamb about her desire to create pieces that evoke a sense of collective intensity among musicians; about how, as a young composer, she found a sense of belonging through rational intonation; and about how she conceptualises listening and the perception of sound, and in particular the idea of sound as multi-dimensional shapes.

Catherine Lamb’s inter-spatia premieres at Borealis – a festival for experimental music on 18th March in Bergen, Norway, and then on the 20th March at MaerzMusik in Berlin, Germany.

Talking Experiments is hosted by Jennifer Torrence and produced by Borealis – a festival for experimental music

Talking Experiments with Catherine Lamb

This track is quoted from the album 'Gradual Transition'.
Listening to all tracks of the album and purchasing are available on the link below.

https://gallerysix.bandcamp.com/album/gradual-transition

All tracks are produced by Hidekazu Imashige. 
Cover art by Hidekazu Imashige

Autumn Leaves

NASA's Edward Kim and NOAA's Pam Sullivan discuss NASA's role in weather research.

Small Steps, Giant Leaps Podcast

Small Steps, Giant Leaps: Episode 84, NASA’s Role in Weather Research

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

Recorded on the southern hemisphere spring equinox in Platypus Bay, K'gari, Australia.

We dedicate this recording to Uncle Lewis Walker, Aboriginal elder of the Wahrlabal tribe of the Bundjalung nation of Byron Bay. Uncle Lewis is a Keeper of the Ancient Songlines of the Whales. We honour the Ancestor Spirits of Bundjalung Country. We honour Uncle Lewis's Dreaming Lineage and we honour Uncle Lewis's innate understanding of the relationship between the water, the whales, the Earth and humanity. Uncle Lewis reminds us that all Earth's creatures are our brothers and sisters.

Whale Song Research

Songlines Equinox 2023

STS-135: Launch Commentary

Ever wonder how the International Space Station alarms sounds? This emergency alert is the last thing astronauts on the ISS ever want to hear as they work 400 km above Earth in the vacuum of space.   
 
This sound was sent to us by the Columbus Control Centre, near München, Germany, the operations centre for ESA astronauts and the Columbus laboratory, part of the orbiting weightless research centre.

The alarm is sounded on the International Space Station to alert astronauts to life-threatening emergencies such as loss of pressure or fire. The astronauts would immediately convene near their Soyuz spacecraft that serve as lifeboats, but these kind of emergencies are extremely rare and the alarm has sounded only a handful of times despite the Space Station having been inhabited since 2000. 

Most astronauts on a six-month space flight will only ever hear the sound during a practice session.

Regular 'fire-drills' are performed to make sure that even in a worst-case scenario everybody knows what to do. Mission controllers from the international partners that run the Space Station in Russia, USA, Europe and Japan re-enact scenarios with the astronauts in space. In critical situations the teams on ground need to communicate efficiently, act quickly and coordinate a solution between each other and the astronauts flying 400 km above them.

Image credit: ESA/NASA

Audio credit: ESA, CC BY-SA IGO 3.0 
http://www.esa.int/Services/Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_IGO_CC_BY-SA_3.0_IGO_Licence

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/

International Space Station siren

GO! GO! GO! All stations reporting in at the European Space Agency's European Spacecraft Operations Centre before ESA's Biomass satellite is launched on 29 April 2025.

BiomassRollCall

This vintage recording recently found in the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory audio archives comes from NASA's first successful communications satellite, Project Echo. The project involved bouncing radio signals off a 10-story-high, aluminum-coated balloon orbiting the Earth in 1960. This form of “passive” satellite communication – which they dubbed a “satelloon” -- was an idea conceived by an engineer from NASA’s Langley Research Center and a project managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. JPL sent and received signals through two of its 85-foot-diameter antennas at the West Coast Goldstone tracking station in the Mojave Desert.

The first transmission was sent on Aug. 12, 1960, between Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel, N.J., and Goldstone. This recording was released as part of a technical report on Dec. 1, 1960. It includes a greeting from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, explaining how Echo fits into the U.S. program of peaceful space research accessible to other countries, and a message from then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson imagining a “not too distant future when one man, one program, can be seen and heard simultaneously in every living room of the world.”

NASA's First Communications Satellite: Project Echo

History changed on 4 October 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball (58 cm across), weighed only 83.6 kg and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the US-USSR space race.

This audio file is a recording of the telemetry signals transmitted by Sputnik from orbit - the first artificial signals ever delivered from space. Text credit: NASA (https://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/)

Image, audio credit: NASA CC BY-NC-SA

Sputnik 1957 - history's first artificial signals from space

A Baleia (pronounced 'a bal-e-a', meaning The Whale in Portuguese) is the seventh solo release from British musician, Will Samson.

After the electronic-infused folk songs of September 2017's Welcome Oxygen (released on Talitres), Samson presents a 22-minute album of tape manipulated soundscapes.

The idea to focus on wordless ambient works was originally inspired by time spent in a flotation tank (a soundproof pod in which the participant floats in highly salted warm water in complete darkness, experiencing weightlessness) during Summer 2017. The first in a small series of events that proved to be deeply healing.

A Baleia features violin performances by Beatrijs De Klerck (a frequent collaborator of Samson, both live and in the studio) and Matt Resovich of The Album Leaf, as well as collaborations with Benoit Pioulard + more.​​

A Baleia

Will Samson - Faroleiro

By Daniel Wytanis

The musicians for NASA Explorers: Apollo took inspiration from science fiction, Apollo audio from the NASA archives and the excitement surrounding NASA’s upcoming human exploration of the Moon with the Artemis program.

Tycho's Daydream - From the soundtrack to “NASA Explorers: Apollo”

ESA’s Cluster mission has recorded the magnetic waves generated in the magnetic foreshock above Earth – the first region of our planet’s magnetic environment that solar wind particles encounter – during calm space weather conditions. This audio file contains a 'sonification' of the data, where sounds were obtained by transforming the frequencies of these magnetic waves into audible signals.

Read the full story on ESA's website: http://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Earth_s_magnetic_song_recorded_for_the_first_time_during_a_solar_storm

Credit: ESA/Cluster; M. Archer, Queen Mary University of London – CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Earth’s magnetic 'song' during calm space weather conditions

Official SoundCloud channel of ESA - the European Space Agency. Most (not all) audio content here is licensed under CC BY-SA IGO 3.0. Please check individual credits to be certain. Can't find a track? Our channel used to be http://www.soundcloud.com/esaops - but not anymore. Try searching here for the track name or using keywords instead.

Earth’s magnetic 'song' during calm space weather conditions

European Space Agency

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