A sonification of data recorded by the Italian Spring Accelerometer (ISA) aboard the BepiColombo Mercury Planetary Orbiter spacecraft during the flyby of Venus on 10 August 2021. The accelerometer data was converted to frequency to be made audible to the human ear. The audio clip represents a period of two hours, one hour either side of the close approach to Venus, which took place at 13:51:54 UTC at a distance of 552 km from the planet’s surface. The sounds reflect the rapid change in reaction wheel velocity as the spacecraft felt the gravity of the planet, and the huge changes in temperature in the spacecraft structure.

Read more: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Sights_and_sounds_of_a_Venus_flyby

Credit: ESA/BepiColombo/ISA/ASI-INAF, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Sound of a close Venus flyby

A simple sonification of the variability of the total magnetic field during BepiColombo’s second Venus flyby as measured by the Mercury Planetary Orbiter’s Magnetometer (OB sensor). 

The audio spans the same time range 12:00 to 14:30 UTC on 10 August 2021, including the closest approach at 13:51 UTC. 

Almost all high frequency noises are due to spacecraft activity. The low frequency, wind-like noises are caused by the solar wind and its interaction with Venus. The sudden bow shock crossing towards the end can be heard clearly. The data is not yet cleaned from high pitch spacecraft disturbances, but the wind-like sounds allow a rare glimpse into the solar wind interaction with a planetary atmosphere.

What is heard is the 128 Hz measurement of the high-pass filtered (0.01 Hz) total magnetic field, mapped to audio with 44.1 kHz sampling frequency. For better audibility some compression, limiting and increase in gain is applied to the signal.

Read more: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Sights_and_sounds_of_a_Venus_flyby

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

BepiColombo - Mission to Mercury

The sound of the solar wind at Venus

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

Audio recording of the Doppler shift in the high-frequency radio signals received from Mars Express by Bertrand Pinel, 29 December 2013, in his garden near Castelnaudary, France. Credit & Copyright (C) B. Pinel. Used by permission. Details via ESA's Mars Express blog http://wp.me/p2E5wN-aU

Mars Express flies by Phobos 29 Dec 2013

One of the surprising discoveries coming out of Gaia data release 3, is that Gaia is able to detect starquakes – tiny motions on the surface of a star – that change the shapes of stars, something the observatory was not originally built for.

Previously, Gaia already found radial oscillations that cause stars to swell and shrink periodically, while keeping their spherical shape. But Gaia has now also spotted other vibrations that are more like large-scale tsunamis. These nonradial oscillations change the global shape of a star and are therefore harder to detect.

Nonradial oscillation modes cause a star's surface to move while it rotates, as shown in the animation. Dark patches are slightly cooler than bright patches, giving rise to periodic changes in the brightness of the star. The frequency of the rotating and pulsating stars was increased 8.6 times to shift them into the audible range of humans.

Learn more: https://bit.ly/GaiaDR3

Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Gaia sees starquakes

Audio data collected by the Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument (HASI), which includes an acoustic sensor, during Huygens' descent, 14 January 2005. This recording is a laboratory reconstruction of the sounds heard by Huygens' microphones. Several sound samples, taken at different times during the descent, are here combined together and give a realistic reproduction of what a traveller on board Huygens would have heard during one minute of the descent through Titan's atmosphere.

Credit: ESA/NASA/ASI/HASI team (M. Fulchignoni)

Huygens: Alien winds descent

A team of experts, including scientists and musicians, has created a new way to explore the images and data from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The first two tracks map the prismatic landscapes of the Cosmic Cliffs in the Carina Nebula as well as two views of the Southern Ring Nebula. A third track plays the notes of a transmission spectrum, which graphs the atmospheric characteristics of hot gas giant exoplanet WASP-96 b. All allow listeners to pick out key features and experience the data in a new way.

Southern Ring Nebula — NIRCam

Southern Ring Nebula - Side By Side

Cosmic Cliffs — Stars

Cosmic Cliffs — Top

Cosmic Cliffs - Complete Sonification

Voice of Paul Blythe, MTG Programme Manager at ESA

What Is The Flexible Combined Imager

What Is The Lightning Imager?

Voice of Donny Aminou, MTG Payload Manager

What Is Nowcasting?

Voice of Alexander Schmid, Eumetsat Programme Manager

What is the duration of the MTG mission?

Despite being essential to life on Earth, the magnetic field isn’t something we can actually see in itself, or ever hear. But, remarkably, scientists at the Technical University of Denmark have taken magnetic signals measured by ESA’s Swarm satellite mission and converted them into sound – and for something that protects us, the result is pretty scary.
Sound design & concept: Klaus Nielsen (https://soundcloud.com/maplepools) and Nikolai Linden-Vörnle (https://soundcloud.com/kamikaze_vildsvin)
Image by Crimson Sound (https://soundcloud.com/crimson-sound-483379629)
Read the full story: https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/FutureEO/Swarm/The_scary_sound_of_Earth_s_magnetic_field

The scary sound of Earth’s magnetic field

One year ago, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted, causing widespread destruction to the Pacific Island Nation of Tonga. It spewed volcanic material up to 58 km into the atmosphere, brought a nearly 15 m tsunami that crashed ashore, destroying villages, and created a sonic boom that rippled around the world – twice. 

Even one year on, interest in the extraordinary explosive eruption remains. A sound artist has recently recreated the sonification of the underwater volcanic eruption using rayleigh signal intensity data provided by the Aeolus Virtual Research Environment platform.

Using wind data obtained on one of its overpasses over the ash cloud of the Hunga Tonga explosion, Jamie Perera used an audio sample of one of the shock waves, time-stretched it into a ghostly tone, and assigned it to harmonic values transcribed from 90 Aeolus readings taken over a duration of approximately 15 minutes. 
The listener hears one reading every two seconds, in a harmonic range that spans six piano octaves, the highest of which can be heard at around 01:18 minutes when the readings show the eruption’s dust plume at its highest peak (over 20.5 km). The artistic intention behind the sonification was to evoke the otherworldly landscape of Hunga Tonga and other volcanoes. 

Sonification credit/copyright: @jamieperera (2023). Used by permission. Data and guidance provided by Daniel Santillan. Thanks to Peter Bickerton and Jemma Foster. Originally created as part of Wild Alchemy Journal - Air Edition - Aeolus

Sound of the Hunga Tonga Volcanic Eruption

Juice Operations Director, Andrea Accomazzo, completes the final GO/NO GO RollCall before ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer lifts-off on an Ariane 5 from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou on 14 April.

Mission Control is GO for launch.

Juice RollCall

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

Euclid Operations Director, Andreas Rudolph, completes the final GO/NO GO RollCall before ESA's cosmic detective is launched from Cape Canaveral on 1 July, to discover the secrets of the dark Universe.

Mission Control is GO for launch.

Euclid RollCall

ESA’s Earth Explorer Aeolus satellite was launched in August 2018 on a trailblazing mission to show how profiling Earth’s winds from space can improve weather forecasts and climate models. Marking the end of Aeolus’ remarkable mission, ESA worked with composer Jamie Perera to create a woodwind piece from data that spanned the lifetime of the satellite’s life in orbit around Earth.

In the resulting orchestral piece, every second is a day in the life of Aeolus, with data represented by the following instruments: 
Piccolo: Rayleigh Top Altitude (the tops of clouds)  
Flute: Rayleigh Observation Type (density of clouds)
Oboe: Rayleigh Reference Temperature (wind temperature)
Clarinet 1: Rayleigh Wind Velocity (wind velocity)
Clarinet 2: Rayleigh Wind Reference Pressure (air pressure)  
Bassoon/Bass Clarinet: Rayleigh Bottom Altitude (Earth’s surface)
Ambient Synth: Validity Flag 0 (Aeolus downtime)
You can also hear landmark events such as volcanic eruptions represented by drums, hurricanes represented by wind sound effects, and the Coronavirus pandemic represented by a pulsing synth. 

Read the full story:
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/FutureEO/Aeolus/The_sound_of_Aeolus_will_blow_you_away

Download the full performance guide:
https://esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/EarthObservation/Life-of-Aeolus-Performance-Guide.pdf

Credits: @jamieperera (2023). Used by permission. Data and guidance provided by Daniel Santillan; sonification programming by Adrian Lewis

The sound of the wind from space

UPDATE (20 Aug 2015): What made the comet sing? Scientists working on Rosetta's RPC instrument have found out why 67P/C-G was singing. Via http://wp.me/p46DHN-1nN
==
ORIGINAL Citation (Oct 2014): Rosetta’s Plasma Consortium (RPC) has uncovered a mysterious ‘song’ that Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is singing into space. The comet seems to be emitting a ‘song’ in the form of oscillations in the magnetic field in the comet’s environment. It is being sung at 40-50 millihertz, far below human hearing, which typically picks up sound between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. To make the music audible to the human ear, the frequencies have been increased in this recording. This sonification of the RPC-Mag data was compiled by German composer Manuel Senfft (www.tagirijus.de).  Read full details in ESA's Rosetta blog: http://wp.me/p46DHN-Li 

Copyright Notice

Original Data Credit: ESA/Rosetta/RPC/RPC-MAG
Sonification: TU Braunschweig/IGEP/Manuel Senfft, CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Thumbnail image credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

A Singing Comet

Sensors in the feet of Rosetta’s lander Philae have recorded the sound of touchdown as it first came into contact with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The instrument, SESAME-CASSE, was turned on during the descent and clearly registered the first touchdown as Philae came into contact with the comet, in the form of vibrations detected in the soles of the lander’s feet. 

Technical note: This is the actual sound file; i.e. it is a recording of mechanical vibrations at acoustic frequencies. No modification was necessary except for some technical adjustments (e.g. the .wav format requires amplitude normalization). Actual frequency content and duration are unchanged.

Read full details in ESA's Rosetta blog: http://wp.me/p46DHN-Sr

CREDIT: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/SESAME/DLR (CC BY-SA IGO 3.0) 

This soundfile is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) licence. The user is allowed to reproduce, distribute, adapt, translate and publicly perform this publication, without explicit permission, provided that the content is accompanied by an acknowledgement that the source is credited as 'ESA/Rosetta/Philae/SESAME/DLR', a direct link to the licence text is provided and that it is clearly indicated if changes were made to the original content. Adaptation/translation/derivatives must be distributed under the same licence terms as this publication. To view a copy of this license, please visit: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/

Thumbnail image credit: ESA/ATG medialab 
Audio file credit: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/SESAME/DLR





Philae touchdown makes a thud

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

Another gem from the ESA archives: 

Tracks left behind by the November 2000 Leonids shower, as detected by ESA scientists.

Each time a meteor crosses the atmosphere, it leaves behind a short trail of ionised particles. This trail reflects high-frequency radio signals from stations around the world for just a few seconds. The motion of the meteor trail due to the upper atmosphere winds changes the frequency of the reflected signal (Doppler effect). You 'hear' the trail as it is blown around by the winds before it is eventually dispersed.

You are invited to use, re-use or remix this sonification. When doing so, please credit 'ESA - European Space Agency, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO' and stick to the licence:

This work is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) licence. The user is allowed to reproduce, distribute, adapt, translate and publicly perform this publication, without explicit permission, provided that the content is accompanied by an acknowledgement that the source is credited as 'ESA - European Space Agency’, a direct link to the licence text is provided and that it is clearly indicated if changes were made to the original content. Adaptation/translation/derivatives must be distributed under the same licence terms as this publication. The user must not give any suggestion that ESA necessarily endorses the modifications that you have made.

No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.

Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from ESA. To view a copy of this license, please visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/

Source: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Sounds_from_space 

Wailing Leonids

Ever wonder how the International Space Station alarms sound? This caution alert is heard in control centres and on the Space Station accompanied by flashing lights for non-urgent anomalies. 

Astronauts rarely need to act on these alarms - ground control takes care of them. They are often suppressed at night to ensure a quiet night's sleep for the crew on the International Space Station.

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.

When a caution is “inhibited” it does not get processed by the central computer of the Space Station. When Cautions are “suppressed” an alarm is triggered on a Station laptop or ground control display, but "Lights and Tones" that would wake astronauts at night are activated. Of course, very specific guidelines exist to decide when an alarm event can be turned off or suppressed. Cautions are not time-critical – and the astronauts only need to do something if control centres are out of contact with the Space Station for some reason and cannot analyse the data or send corrective commands.

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 caution alarm

Ever wonder how the International Space Station alarms sound? This warning alert is sounded whenever an anomaly is detected that is not life-threatening but does require immediate action.

These require an immediate response because an important component of the Space Station has a problem. These are also marked in red and the alarm is designed to attract attention. Based on the error code that is displayed, the astronauts and control centres can quickly reach for the appropriate procedure to follow as a first response to warnings.

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.

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 warning alarm

A sonification of stellar catalogues through the history of astrometry, demonstrating the remarkable progress that has been made in the lead up to the first data release from ESA's Gaia mission. 

The clip is a sampler, containing extracts from sonifications of the catalogues by Hipparchus of Nicaea (II century BC, handed down by Ptolemy); Ulugh Beg (1437); Tycho Brahe (1598); John Flamsteed (1725); Jérôme Lalande (1801); the Yale Trigonometric Parallax Catalogue (1995); and the Hipparcos Catalogue (1997). 

The sonification of each catalogue lasts about 15 seconds in this clip; the various astronomical parameters provided in each catalogue were mapped into different dimensions in a soundscape.

More info at: http://sci.esa.int/gaia/58311 

Author: Jamie Ferguson
Credit: Jamie Ferguson/ESA/Hipparcos & others (Hipparchus-Ptolemy/Ulugh Beg/Tycho Brahe/J.Flamsteed/J.Lalande/Yale Trigonometric Parallax Catalogue) – CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

From Hipparchus to Hipparcos: A sonification sampler of stellar catalogues

On 28 May 2014, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman and Russian cosmonaut Maxim Suraev rocketed into space in a Soyuz spacecraft. This was their voyage - in audio.

Strapped atop 274 tonnes of rocket propellants delivering 26 million horsepower, it took only six hours to reach their destination, the International Space Station ISS.

Soyuz ride into space

Electromagnetic waves travelling upward from a lightning strike undergo dispersion in the ionosphere. High frequencies travel faster and arrive before the longer waves, giving rise to a whistling tone from high to low recorded by our magnetometer.

Credits ESA/CNES/Leti/IPGP/Swarm DISC

Hear the lightning

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

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 a solar storm. This audio file contains a 'sonification' of the data, where sounds were obtained by transforming the frequencies of these magnetic waves into audible signals. The sounds are higher in pitch and more complicated than during calm conditions.

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 a solar storm

Satellites in orbit share near-Earth space with millions of fast-moving and dangerous debris objects. Tim Flohrer, Head of ESA's Space Debris Office, and Nathalie Ricard, Scientific Officer at the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), discuss the scale of the debris problem, asking what are our satellites are up against?

While you listen, check out the corresponding ESA-UN infographic that illustrates this topic: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2021/02/Satellites_vs_Debris

ESA & UNOOSA on: Satellites vs space debris

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