MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
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Contact: Guy Webster, (818) 354-6278

One audio clip produced from radio waves that NASA's Cassini spacecraft detected near Jupiter was described last week by the Los Angeles Times as sounding "like a troop of howler monkeys battling underwater." A new audio clip is available online today from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/acoustic

Cassini's radio and plasma wave science instrument detected the waves at low radio frequencies, which University of Iowa scientists have converted to sound waves to make the patterns audible. The waves from which the new audio clip was developed were in the thin solar wind of charged particles that fills the space between the Sun and its planets. Cassini detected the waves Jan. 1 at a distance of 10 million kilometers (6.2 million miles) from Jupiter.

Cassini, a cooperative mission of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, passed Jupiter Dec. 30 for a gravity boost to reach its ultimate destination, Saturn. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages Cassini for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.