The sound of touchdown
Date: 19 November 2014
Satellite: Rosetta
Depicts: Artists's impression of Philae landing
Copyright: See below
Sensors in the feet of Rosetta's lander Philae have recorded the sound of touchdown as it first came into contact with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The instrument, SESAME-CASSE, was turned on during the descent and clearly registered the first touchdown as Philae came into contact with the comet, in the form of vibrations detected in the soles of the lander's feet.
The sound file can be downloaded here.
Technical note: This is the actual sound file; i.e. it is a recording of mechanical vibrations at acoustic frequencies. No modification was necessary except for some technical adjustments (e.g. the .wav format requires amplitude normalisation). Actual frequency content and duration are unchanged.
Credits
Image credit: ESA/ATG medialab
Audio file credit: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/SESAME/DLR (CC BY-SA IGO 3.0)
The sound file is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) licence. The user is allowed to reproduce, distribute, adapt, translate and publicly perform this publication, without explicit permission, provided that the content is accompanied by an acknowledgement that the source is credited as 'ESA/Rosetta/Philae/SESAME/DLR', a direct link to the licence text is provided and that it is clearly indicated if changes were made to the original content. Adaptation/translation/derivatives must be distributed under the same licence terms as this publication. To view a copy of this license, please visit: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/
