ESA - European Space Agency

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...

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...

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 f...

This audio is a sonification of the radio signal transmitted by ESA's Mars Express (in X-Band at 8.4GHz) on 28 May 2015 at 13:50 UTC. It was transmitted over a distance of 2.54 AU, equal to 380 million km and took 21 minutes to make the journey. It was recorded by Bertrand Pinel (F 5PL), using second-hand signal analysis equipment and a surplus French government radio dish antenna in his backyard,...

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 m...

Speaking on the Main Control Room voice 'loop', or intercom, at approximately 14:17 CEST, 14 May 2009, Herschel-Planck Flight Operations Director John Dodsworth conducted the traditional 'GO/NO-GO' roll call during which all supporting teams at ESOC confirmed their readiness to support today's launch. Responses on the voice loop came from the Spacecraft Operations Managers (SOMs) Micha Schmidt (He...

Speaking on the Main Control Room voice 'loop', or intercom, at approximately 13:31 CET on 17 March 2009, GOCE Flight Operations Director Pier-Paulo Emanuelli conducted the traditional 'GO/NO-GO' roll call during which all supporting teams at ESOC confirmed their readiness to support today's launch. Responses on the voice loop came from the Spacecraft Operations Manager (SOM), Juan Piñeiro, as wel...

This minute-long sound file covers about 4 hours of real time - from when ESA's Huygens probe deployed its main parachute and started transmitting, down to its landing on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, two and a half hours later and then around an hour on the surface. The sound is a tone whose frequency depends on the strength of Huygens' signal as received by the receiver on board Cassini. This in...