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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

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

This recording was produced by converting into audible sounds some of the radar echoes received by Huygens during the last few kilometres of its descent onto Titan. As the probe approaches the ground, both the pitch and intensity increase. Scientists used the intensity of the echoes to speculate about the nature of the surface. 

Image credit: ESA/NASA

Audio: ESA/HASI (M. Fulchignoni), CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO


Huygens Alien Descent Radar

The pre-launch roll call for the launch of the Copernicus Sentinel-1C satellite at ESA's ESOC mission control centre

Sentinel-1C Roll Call

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

ESA's Euclid space telescope is creating the largest 3D-map ever made of our Universe, to study the most mysterious cosmic components: dark matter and dark energy. While scanning the sky, Euclid snapped a breathtaking image of Messier 78, a vibrant nursery of star formation.

This audio is a sonification of the image, where the twinkling sounds represent the galaxies and stars in the frame. The steady undertone rising and falling in the background corresponds to the swathes of interstellar dust in the image.

Sound design: Klaus Nielsen (@maplepools) 

Image: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay) and G. Anselmi

Watch the video: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2024/12/Cosmic_jingles_listen_to_Euclid_s_image_of_M78 


Cosmic Jingles: listen to Euclid’s image of a star nursery

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

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

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

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