NASA Puts Online a Big Collection of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Download and Use


When we envi­sion the fruits of the research of the Unit­ed States’ Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion (aka NASA), we tend to think of images. I think I exag­ger­ate not at all when I say that the nev­er-before-seen view of the Earth from space gave human­i­ty a whole new per­spec­tive, no pun intend­ed, on our very exis­tence. But you don’t have to strain too hard to think of his­tor­i­cal­ly momen­tous NASA sounds, either: “Hous­ton we’ve had a prob­lem,” “One giant leap for mankind.”

If you can’t think of more than those two, why not spend some lis­ten­ing time with NASA’s new Sound­cloud account, or alter­na­tive­ly perus­ing the NASA Sounds web site, which fea­tures a larg­er num­ber of down­load­able mp3s. “There are rock­et sounds, the chirps of satel­lites and equip­ment, light­ning on Jupiter, inter­stel­lar plas­ma and radio emis­sions,” writes Cre­ate Dig­i­tal Music’s Peter Kirn. “And in one nod to human­i­ty, and not just Amer­i­can human­i­ty, there’s the Sovi­et satel­lite Sput­nik (among many projects that are inter­na­tion­al in nature).” Bet­ter still, “you’re free to use all of these sounds as you wish, because NASA’s own audio isn’t copy­right­ed.”

We’ve includ­ed here three of NASA’s Sound­cloud playlists: space shut­tle mis­sion sounds, solar sys­tem and beyond sounds, and Pres­i­dent Kennedy sounds. When you’ve lis­tened through all NASA them­selves have uploaded, you can find more sound clips of out­er-space inter­est in NASA’s liked sounds, a col­lec­tion of the ambi­ent sounds of space explo­ration that include those of a space suit­’s inter­nal pump, a Japan­ese exper­i­ment mod­ule, and, of course, a space toi­let — a con­stant son­ic com­pan­ion on any trip to the final fron­tier.

Please note that you can down­load the Sound­cloud files by fol­low­ing these instruc­tions. From the NASA Sounds web page, you can down­load files by right click­ing on them and then sav­ing them to your hard dri­ve.

via Cre­ate Dig­i­tal Music

h/t @sheerly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free NASA eBook The­o­rizes How We Will Com­mu­ni­cate with Aliens

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

Ray Brad­bury Reads Mov­ing Poem on the Eve of NASA’s 1971 Mars Mis­sion

Great Cities at Night: Views from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

NASA Presents “The Earth as Art” in a Free eBook and Free iPad App

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.


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