Looking for spacecraft/radiosonde data sounds
March 7, 2015 7:23 AM   Subscribe

I collect radio sounds, with the eventual intention of publishing a curated list and, possibly, making music based around that collection. I have a fair amount of space-based sounds, but I'd really like to find the 'actual sound' of spacecraft radio - in other words, what you'd hear if you could listen to the baseband after AM or FM demodulation (even if they're not AM/FM signals) but before decoding.

A lot of early/distant spacecraft have downlinks that naturally fall into the audio band, at least in terms of symbol rate, but higher rate downlinks would be of interest too since they'd be amenable to some form of translation.

My gold prize would be Voyager or any of the historic missions, but if you're working at the DSN or know someone who is who might throw me a few sample files, I'll take anything you've got. Actual audio or IQ files would be ideal, but I (guess I) can convert anything with bits in.

Another thing on my wishlist is radiosonde transmission. A lot of weather balloons used to have a simple audio-encoded analogue downlink on 27 MHz that sounded great when I used to catch them in the 1970s, but I don't have any recordings from back then. I'd really like to find recordings of these older types - I think they may still be used in India, but haven't managed to confirm this.

So: any clues for sources of either of these sorts of data would be welcome.
posted by Devonian to Science & Nature (11 answers total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
Anything here?

https://archive.org/details/nasaaudiocollection
posted by humboldt32 at 8:45 AM on March 7, 2015


humboldt32 nailed it. I use that archive a lot.
posted by goatdog at 8:47 AM on March 7, 2015


Response by poster: Thanks guys. I know that archive and it's terrific, but I don't think it has any data downlink sounds, it's all launch and mission audio. I certainly can't find any there. I doubt the stuff I'm looking for has ever been officially released by NASA to the general public.
posted by Devonian at 10:01 AM on March 7, 2015


Here you go:

http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/sounds/sounds.htm
posted by hz37 at 10:12 AM on March 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Ah, Sven's Space Place! A very good source, and I didn't know he'd indexed all his sounds, so that's really useful.

Still after the longer-distance stuff...
posted by Devonian at 11:57 AM on March 7, 2015


This isn't what you're asking for, but I think it's in the ballpark. My local (Seattle) public radio station KUOW did this story recently on some experimental work at Microsoft's Cybercrime Center which renders botnet heartbeats and other signals into audio. It sounds as though the goal is to convert these things in the audio so that it can be tested by the advanced pattern recognition that humans do. I have no idea whether it'll be useful for defeating botnets, but you gotta admit it makes a great story for radio specifically.

There's some raw and produced results here; might be worth a listen, if you agree with me that a data-signal from a robot a data-signal from a robot, whether the robot is on Earth or in space.
posted by Sunburnt at 3:15 PM on March 7, 2015


Response by poster: I can't actually tell what that Microsoft thing is, except bizarre! One certainly can have a lot of fun turning network data patterns into audible analogues; in the good old days of 10baseT Ethernet, you could put a transistor radio next to a network cable and hear all sorts going on. But the MS thing is entirely synthetic and doesn't seem to produce any useful information - they as much admit that in the text - and while it may be an interesting experiment it may also be a bit of media-friendly woofery. But thanks for pointing it out - I may yet have a use for it .

What floats my boat about spacecraft telemetry is that it's designed to do a very specific job as well as possible, under the hardest conditions imaginable, and it is the messenger that carries the entire purpose of the mission. It is also unseen and unsung: nobody knows or cares about it, in the main. It encompasses some of the highest aims and abilities of our intellect, and our powers to encompass the invisible.

And it uses really big dishes. Don't forget those.

posted by Devonian at 10:33 AM on March 8, 2015


Best answer: The author of baudline has posted a couple of blog entries about analysis of Voyager downlink data, but doesn't seem to have the raw data files available. The files are named vger-2010-07-14-406.pktdata and 2012-11-07_21-14-05_UTC.act61.dx1011.id-4.L.archive-compamp - you might be able to find them somewhere in the SonATA site or repos.
posted by russm at 7:33 PM on March 8, 2015




Response by poster: Russm - thanks very much. That post doesn't of itself have what I'm after, but it does open lots of new avenues to investigate. I think we're off again!
posted by Devonian at 12:30 PM on April 6, 2015


Are these new to you?
posted by humboldt32 at 10:30 AM on May 22, 2015


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