ESA - European Space Agency

A sonification of the stellar catalogue compiled by French astronomer Jérôme Lalande in 1801. It contains the position of 50 000 stars and a precision of around three arcseconds. More info at: http://sci.esa.int/gaia/58311 Credit: Jamie Ferguson/ESA/Hipparcos & others (data from J. Lalande) – CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

A sonification of the Yale Trigonometric Parallax Catalogue, published in 1995 by American astronomer William van Altena. He completed the work started by Frank Schlesinger in 1924 (who had made a huge step forward in the field thanks to progresses in the use of photographic plates) and continued by Louise Freeland Jenkins in 1952. It is the largest catalogue of stellar parallaxes compiled with gr...

A sonification of the catalogue compiled using data from ESA's Hipparcos mission. Operating from 1989 to 1993, Hipparcos was the first space telescope devoted to measuring stellar positions. The Hipparcos catalogue, released in 1997, contains the position, parallax and proper motion of 117 955 stars with a precision of 0.001 arcseconds, allowing astronomers to probe stellar distances out to over 3...

ESA Director General Jan Woerner meets the media at ILA, the Berlin Air Show, 1 June 2016.

The Sentinel-1B GO/NOGO roll call in the Main Control Room at ESOC, ESA's European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany. The roll call was conducted by Flight Director Pier Paolo Emanuelli at 21:42 CEST, just 80 minutes before lift off at 23:02 CEST (21:02 UTC), 25 April 2016. Image credit: ESA {{NOTE:: The roll-call from the previous day's launch attempt, on 24 April, which was subsequentl...

The Sentinel-1B GO/NOGO roll call in the Main Control Room at ESOC, ESA's European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany. The roll call was conducted by Flight Director Pier Paolo Emanuelli at 21:42 CEST, just 80 minutes before lift off at 23:02 CEST (21:02 UTC), 24 April 2016. Image credit: ESA {{UPDATE:: Approximately 45 mins after this roll call, launch was postponed due to an anomaly. A...

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...

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...

Soundtrack of ExoMars, ESA's new mission to the Red Planet, lifting off from on a Proton-M rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan at 09:31 GMT on 14 March 2016.

ESA Flight Director Micha Schmidt conducted the GO/NOGO roll call for ExoMars/TGO launch at 09:37 CET on 14 March 2016 in the Main Control Room at ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany.

Spacecraft and Satellites are expensive, and once in space they cannot be easily fixed. This is why they must be tested thoroughly before they are sent into space. During the various phases of its development a spacecraft or satellite and its component parts undergo extensive testing. The majority of ESA spacecraft and satellites are tested at the ESA ESTEC Test Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherland...

Spacecraft and Satellites are expensive, and once in space they cannot be easily fixed. This is why they must be tested thoroughly before they are sent into space. During the various phases of its development a spacecraft or satellite and its component parts undergo extensive testing. The majority of ESA spacecraft and satellites are tested at the ESA ESTEC Test Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherland...

Spacecraft and Satellites are expensive, and once in space they cannot be easily fixed. This is why they must be tested thoroughly before they are sent into space. During the various phases of its development a spacecraft or satellite and its component parts undergo extensive testing. The majority of ESA spacecraft are tested at the ESA ESTEC Test Centre. Here's a sound sample of the BepiColombo M...

Spacecraft and Satellites are expensive, and once in space they cannot be easily fixed. This is why they must be tested thoroughly before they are sent into space. During the various phases of its development a spacecraft or satellite and its component parts undergo extensive testing. The majority of ESA spacecraft are tested at the ESA ESTEC Test Centre. Here's a sound sample of the BepiColombo M...

Spacecraft and Satellites are expensive, and once in orbit they cannot be fixed. This is why they must be tested thoroughly before they are sent into space. During the various phases of its development spacecraft and satellites and their component parts undergo extensive testing. The majority of ESA spacecraft are tested in the ESTEC Test Centre. Here's a sound sample of ESA's IXV spaceplane (comp...

The LISA Pathfinder GO/NOGO roll call in the Main Control Room at ESOC, ESA's European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany. The roll call was conducted by Flight Director Andreas Rudolph just an hour before lift off at 04:04 UTC (05:04 CET), 3 December 2015. Image credit: ESA/K. Siewert - CC BY-SA v3.0 IGO LISA Pathfinder was launched on board a Vega rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, on a...

Philae’s SESAME-CASSE instrument ‘listened’ to the lander’s MUPUS instrument hammer the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko last November. Note: Access full description of this audio file via: http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/11/12/the-sound-of-philae-conducting-science/ ** SESAME-CASSE is the Cometary Acoustic Sounding Surface Experiment located in the lander’s feet in the form of three a...

Philae’s SESAME-CASSE instrument ‘listened’ to the lander’s MUPUS instrument hammer the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko last November. Note: Access full description of this audio file via: http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/11/12/the-sound-of-philae-conducting-science/ ** SESAME-CASSE is the Cometary Acoustic Sounding Surface Experiment located in the lander’s feet in the form of three a...

On 5 October 2015, at 21:32 CEST, one of the first signals from the AAUSAT 5 cubsat was received by a ground station located at ESA/ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands. The beacon signal we received is a short Morse code of about 10 seconds, sent every 5 minutes on UHF frequency 437.425 MHz. It contains an identifier and information about the satellite's condition, providing data on battery voltage...

ESA is hosting the ‘Estrack 40th Anniversary Sound Contest’ and is inviting composers to submit their audio compositions, one of which will be selected as the new theme audio for ESA’s Estrack ground station network. The grand prize winner will be invited to our gala celebration at Cebreros tracking station, Spain, on 24 September. Entries may be submitted from 30 July to 31 August 2015. Deadline...

This sound file is a recording of a short but spectacular 'whistler' detected by two of ESA's four Cluster satellites on 4 February 2001. The whistler can be heard, above the background noise, arriving after about 2 seconds. Copyright: ESA - European Space Agency, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO http://www.esa.int/Services/Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_IGO_CC_BY-SA_3.0_IGO_licence

The MSG-4 GO/NOGO roll call in the Main Control Room at ESOC, ESA's European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany. The roll call was conducted by Flight Director Nigel Head approximately 2 hours before lift off at 21:42 UTC (23:42 CEST), 15 July 2015. MSG satellites, dubbed Meteosat once operating, provide full-disc images over Europe and Africa every 15 minutes and ‘rapid scan’ imagery ove...

Outdoor ambient sound as ESA's 600-tonne, 35-m deep space tracking station at New Norcia, Western Australia, rotates into horizontal pointing during a maintenance test in 2012. Original source via http://bit.ly/1K5LoWb 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

The Sentinel-2A GO/NOGO roll call in the Main Control Room at ESOC, ESA's European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany. The roll call was conducted by Flight Director Pier Paolo Emanuelli approximately 1 hour before lift off at 01:52:03.980 UTC (03:52:03.980 CEST), 23 June 2015. The 1.1 tonne satellite was carried into space on a Vega rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana...

One of the audible alarm sounds used in the Main Control Room and in mission-specific Dedicated Control Rooms, at ESOC, ESA's space operations centre, Darmstadt, Germany. In a spacecraft's mission control system, this sound can be assigned to any out-of-range event or specific occurrence, to alert the on-duty engineer or spacecraft controller. For example, if an on-board temperature exceeds a cert...