NASA releases audio from Juno spacecraft's recent flyby of Jupiter's moon Europa | Listen

Late last month, NASA's Juno spacecraft flew by Jupiter's icy moon Europa for a few minutes and collected some of the highest-resolution images of the Jovian moon and valuable data on its interior, surface composition, and ionosphere. The agency has now released a video that shows data collected over approximately 1.5 hours during the September 29 flyby.

In this video, measurements by the Waves instrument onboard Juno have been converted to an audible frequency. As the white line moves across the spectrogram, which is a visual way of representing signal strength over time, one can hear the variation of frequency of the plasma waves observed by the instrument in the frequency range of 50 to 150 kHz near Europa as the plasma density varies.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/Univ of Iowa

"Knowing the plasma density near Europa is important to understanding how Europa interacts with Jupiter's magnetosphere. Jupiter's magnetic field, the largest in the solar system, traps the charged particle gas – plasma – that fills the space surrounding Europa (and the rest of the Jupiter system). As Europa moves in its orbit, the magnetic field varies," NASA said in a statement.

Sound up! 🔊 When the #JunoMission spacecraft buzzed low over Jupiter's moon Europa recently, its Waves instrument measured the density of plasma near the intriguing ocean world – and here's that data converted into audible sound. More: https://t.co/5TRTI1IMGI pic.twitter.com/jhLSb5svbh

— NASA Solar System (@NASASolarSystem) October 20, 2022

NASA's Juno spacecraft entered orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016, becoming the first explorer to peer below the planet's dense clouds. Now on an extended mission, Juno continues its investigation of the solar system’s largest planet through September 2025. The September 29 flyby of Europa marks the second encounter with a Galilean moon during its extended mission, following the exploration of Ganymede in June 2021.

The Juno mission is scheduled to make close flybys of Io, the most volcanic body in the solar system, in 2023 and 2024.