NASA has shared a 50-second audio clip that was created using data captured by Juno, a spacecraft used to gather information about Jupiter, as it flew by one of the planet’s moons.
The space agency says Jupiter has at least 79 moons—53 of which have names and 26 of which don’t—in total. The moon in question is called Ganymede, and Juno flew past it on June 7.
“At the time of Juno’s closest approach to Ganymede – during the mission’s 34th trip around Jupiter – the spacecraft was within 645 miles (1,038 kilometers) of the moon’s surface,” NASA says, “and traveling at a relative velocity of 41,600 mph (67,000 kph).”
Juno uses an instrument called Waves to “measure radio and plasma waves in Jupiter’s magnetosphere” so NASA can better “understand the interactions between the planet’s magnetic field, atmosphere, and magnetosphere.”
This is how NASA represented the data from the flyby:
“This soundtrack is just wild enough to make you feel as if you were riding along as Juno sails past Ganymede for the first time in more than two decades,” Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton said in a statement. “If you listen closely, you can hear the abrupt change to higher frequencies around the midpoint of the recording, which represents entry into a different region in Ganymede’s magnetosphere.”
NASA says that “detailed analysis and modeling of the Waves data are ongoing.”
