NASA’s Cassini Listens to Eerie New Sounds of Space Near Jupiter

One audio clip produced from radio waves that NASA’s Cassini
spacecraft detected near Jupiter was described last week by the
Los Angeles Times as sounding “like a troop of howler monkeys
battling underwater.” A new audio clip is available online today
from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/acoustic

Cassini’s radio and plasma wave science instrument detected
the waves at low radio frequencies, which University of Iowa
scientists have converted to sound waves to make the patterns
audible. The waves from which the new audio clip was developed were
in the thin solar wind of charged particles that fills the space
between the Sun and its planets. Cassini detected the waves
Jan. 1 at a distance of 10 million kilometers (6.2 million miles)
from Jupiter.

Cassini, a cooperative mission of NASA, the European Space
Agency and the Italian Space Agency, passed Jupiter Dec. 30 for
a gravity boost to reach its ultimate destination, Saturn.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages Cassini
for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a
division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.