From streaming rare audio from the surface of Mars to taking images deep inside the Sun’s atmosphere, NASA’s missions never cease to amaze us. Now, the space agency has released yet another piece of mind-bending footage to further dazzle us smooth-brained plebs: an audio clip taken from Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede.
The 50-second audio clip from NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter in June this year is generated from data captured during the spacecraft’s closest approach yet to Ganymede – the planet’s largest moon.
The audio – an eerie, frequency-shifting sound – comes from data gathered using Juno’s Waves instrument, which tunes into electronic and magnetic radio waves detected in Jupiter’s magnetosphere – AKA the cluster of charged particles that envelop the gas giant.
Ganymede is the biggest moon in the Solar System and the only moon in the Solar System to have a magnetosphere of its own.
“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 Bolden of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio said in a press release.
“It is possible the change in the frequency shortly after closest approach is due to passing from the nightside to the dayside of Ganymede,” said William Kurth of the University of Iowa in Iowa City, lead co-investigator for the Waves investigation.
As for Jupiter’s neighbouring planet, Saturn, NASA has discovered possible signs of extraterrestrial life in the plumes of its moon, Enceladus.
Rock samples taken an ancient river delta on Mars also point to potential extraterrestial life, according to scientists. Nevertheless, the equipment necessary to fully analyse the samples is far too large and complicated to fly to Mars. Instead, the samples will be picked up from the Martian surface by another rover approximately ten years from now – so, watch this space.
Scientists are currently attempting to decode the frequency changes present within the recording from the Ganymede mission mean. Listen to it for yourself below.
