NASA’s Halloween playlist features new ghoulish sounds from space
Brittany A. Roston - Oct 28, 2020, 

NASA is back with new sounds from various parts of space, giving the public the opportunity to hear new — and somewhat creepy — noises from around the galaxy. The tracks are part of the space agency’s fun Halloween offerings, which also include newly published horror-themed space posters as part of its Galaxy of Horrors artwork series. This year’s audio playlist includes space whistles, moans, and more.

NASA has shared the new space audio on its SoundCloud account, where anyone can listen to space noises produced using data from the Mars InSight lander, the ESA’s Planck spacecraft, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and the Juno spacecraft. Noises represent things like Jupiter’s magnetosphere plasma waves, sounds from the early universe, a marsquake, and more.

The space agency says these are new sounds made possible using previously collected space data, adding to the growing library of similar noises NASA has released in the past. There are 14 total tracks in this playlist, including one’s featuring Jupiter’s Auroras, a blast wave of high energy from Cassiopeia A, a couple of Martian quakes, plasma waves, ‘Galactic Sonification,’ and more.

A few of the tracks are accompanied by extra details, with NASA explaining, for example, that the ‘Sounds of the Ancient Universe’ track was made possible by the Planck spacecraft, which picked up the fluctuations that happened just after the big bang occurred.

NASA’s SoundCloud account features a number of other playlists, including its Curious Universe podcast, NASA Explorers: Apollo, Watch This Space, InSight Lander Sounds of Mars, Small Steps, Giant Leaps podcast, Rocket Ranch, Gravity Assist, and several other series and audio shows.